Survivor: ‘I’ve never hugged someone so tightly,’
Christina Huelsman says it all seems like a “crazy nightmare,” but the bandage on her knee and the wound it conceals remind her that is just wishful thinking.
Then there is the single brown Birkenstock sandal in her parents’ Oakwood home.
Its mate was lost when the recent Bowling Green University graduate fought her way through the crowd trying to escape Ned Peppers Bar after a gunman sprayed the Oregon District with bullets from a .223-caliber rifle.
Before being shot and killed by police, that 24-yearold man killed nine women and men whose ages ranged from 22 to 57. Dozens of others were injured as the confusion and chaos set in.
Huelsman didn’t know the shooter’s whereabouts. As she lost track of her friends in the frenzy, she picked flee instead of freeze or fight.
“I lost all sense of reality,” the 21-year-old said. “I just remember we were crawling. I was like diving over people because everyone was trampling each other. I had to like dive on concrete on the patio just to get out of there. I lost my shoe at some point. I could see a bunch of other people did, too. As soon as I got outside, there were shoes everywhere. People were just running everywhere.”
Huelsman said she ultimately escaped from inside the bar through a back door. Others jumped a fence.
A pile of shoes — dressy sandals, trainers and flipflops — decorated the parking lot behind the bar that attracts people looking to dance the night away.
Huelsman was at Ned’s that night with about five friends and ran into others as her group was waiting for another friend to finish her shift at nearby Oregon Express.
“I remember everyone in the parking lot hiding behind cars,” she said. “You see it on TV every day, but you never think it is going to happen. I never thought I’d be running for my life.”
The group was hanging near the middle of the bar when someone screamed, “Gun, real gun,” she said. “We heard and felt those shots going off,” Huelsman recalled. “You could feel that vibration.”
Before the nightmare started, Huelsman and her friends were having a great night and were thinking about checking out another spot.
“We were all saying it (seemed) earlier than we thought it was,” she said. “The next moment, this all happened.”
Ultimately, Huelsman spotted one of her friends and then the others. They were all safe.
“I’ve never hugged anyone so tightly,” she said.
The night marked Huelsman’s first time at the club, and it was a scene she says has fundamentally changed her.
“A part of me is left there,” said Huelsman, who will soon start a job at Kohl’s corporate office in Milwaukee. “I don’t know when I will be able to go into a place like that and feel safe and comfortable.”