Two victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting shared their stories during a Tuesday afternoon news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando.
Patience Carter, of Philadelphia, had never been to Florida until that night. She described the horror she and others felt as they helplessly huddled in a bathroom stall as the gunman entered.
"We were all getting hit by bullets," she said. "At that point, we knew this wasn’t a game. This was very real. This was really happening to us. We went from having the time of our lives to having the worst night of our lives in a matter of minutes." Carter said the gunman then called 911, saying his motive was retaliation for U.S. bombings "in his country." She said he then pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and began speaking in Arabic.
The shooter, Carter says, later asked if there were any African Americans hiding in the bathroom stall.
"He then spoke to us directly," she said. "He said, 'I don’t have a problem with black people, this is about my country. You guys have suffered enough.'"
That didn't stop him from firing his gun many more times, she said.
"The motive is very clear to us who were lying in blood -- our blood and other people’s blood," she said. "The guilt of being alive is heavy."
Wounded and bloodied, Carter said she prayed that God would take her soul from her body. Survivor Angel Santiago Jr., who hid in a different bathroom stall as the gunman attacked, said he had to drag himself out to safety after being shot in the left foot and right knee. As Santiago and the two friends heard gunshots, they ran to a bathroom for cover. They said they joined about 15 others in a large bathroom stall. The group tried to be quiet. Santiago eventually dragged himself, unable to walk, out of the bathroom and toward police. He used his cellphone light to indicate his presence to officers, who soon grabbed him and got him outside. "I don't even know how I'm alive today," he said.
Orlando Health announced during a Tuesday morning news conference at Orlando Regional Medical Center that of the 44 patients its hospitals treated, 27 remain hospitalized, six of whom are in critical condition.
Doctors said five patients remain in guarded condition and another 16 patients are in stable condition.
No additional victims have died, surgeons said.
Two additional patients injured in the mass shooting were admitted to the hospital. One showed up at Dr. P. Phillips Hospital Monday, the other showed up at Health Central Hospital Tuesday.
Hospital officials expect more patients to show up to the hospital in the coming days as many fled from the club during the shooting.
A man who survived the nightclub shooting in Orlando says he thought "I'm next, I'm dead" as the gunman fired toward his head.
Angel Colon described the horrific night he survived during a news conference on Tuesday at the hospital. Appearing in a wheelchair with the doctors and nurses who treated him nearby, Colon talked about what happened early Sunday at the Pulse nightclub. He says the gunman shot a girl next to him and then shot his hand and his hip. He says he pretended to be dead and the gunman kept firing his gun.
Colon says at times the gunman was shooting people who appeared that they had already been killed.
He thanked the hospital staff and said, "I will love you guys forever."
At the news conference, doctors described "truckloads" and "ambulance-loads" of patients.
Dr. Kathryn Bondani says the first patient that arrived was relatively stable, and the staff hoped that others would be in a similar condition. But the doctors soon got about five patients in much worse shape.
ORMC surgeon Dr. Chadwick Smith said that after the hospital received a wave of 22 patients, there was a lull.
"I quickly realized I needed to call backup. Once they got there, the flow did not stop," Smith said. "You can see the crowdedness in this room; this is about as crowded as it felt in the emergency room that night."
Orlando police then warned hospital staff that another 20 to 25 patients were on the way to the hospital.
"It's very fortunate that this happened two blocks away," Dr. Joseph Ibrahim said of what he called a war-like scene. "When I arrived, the ER had patients in every corner."
Moments after mayhem and gunfire erupted inside the club Sunday, Malcolm Barraza frantically helped others put victims into any vehicle they could.
When there were no rescue vehicle in sight, they put victims into a pick-up truck.
“I’m looking at them, screaming at them, to get this guy to a truck because I know in those instances, like, seconds matter,” Barraza said.
Barraza said he is still horrified by how one person can inflict such harm.
“How a person could do that to someone they don’t know, like, they don’t know anything about you, and you just walk into a building and you change people’s lives,” said Barraza.
EMT Julio Salgado Jr. could still hear the gunfire inside the club when he lifted up his first victim.
“It’s just, I’ve never been on a scene like this before you know, because they seem so helpless,” he said. “You know, and it’s just like, there’s only so much we can do on the road.”
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