ORLANDO ON THE MEND
Tales of survival, heroism emerge
ORLANDO, FLA. • Among the traumatized survivors of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub was Angel Colon, 26, who was shot three times in his leg, then had his bones shattered as he was trampled in the crowd.
Then he was hit again, in the hand and hip, as gunman Omar Mateen shot the injured, apparently “making sure they’re dead.” Later, as a policeman dragged him to safety, his body was cut by shards of broken glass.
“I tried to get back up but everyone started running everywhere, I got trampled over, and I shattered and broke my bones in my left leg,” he said, according to the New York Times.
“All I could do was just lay down while everyone was just running on top of me, trying to get to where they had to be.”
He heard more gunshots and screaming, as Mateen apparently went to a back room, and then returned, the Times reported.
“He’s shooting everyone that’s already dead on the floor, making sure they’re dead,” Colon said. “I look over, and he shoots the girl next to me. And I’m just there laying down, and I’m thinking, ‘I’m next, I’m dead.’
“So I don’t know how, but by the glory of God, he shoots toward my head but it hits my hand, and then he shoots me again and it hits the side of my hip. I had no reaction,” The Times reported. “I was just prepared to just stay there laying down so he won’t know that I’m alive.”
The killer retreated to another room after police arrived and began shooting at him. One of the officers found Colon and dragged him out into the street — glass cutting him on the back and legs — and then to a Wendy’s restaurant.
“I wish I could remember his face or his name,” Colon said of the officer, the Times reported. “I’m grateful for him.”
Luckily, the Pulse nightclub isn’t far from Orlando Regional Medical Center, the region’s main trauma hospital.
Appearing in a wheelchair Tuesday at the hospital’s news conference, Colon turned to the doctors and nurses and said: “I will love you guys forever.”
Another survivor, Patience Carter, told CBS News that she was among a group that fled into the bathroom after the shooting began, only to find themselves trapped inside with Mateen.
According to Carter, after telling police by telephone that he was pledging his allegiance to ISIL, he asked: “Are there any black people in here?”
Carter, 20, said she was too afraid to reply, but another black person hiding in the bathroom with her did.
“I don’t have a problem with black people,” Mateen said in reply, CBS reported. “This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.”
After a while, police began shouting to survivors to move away from the bathroom walls so they could blow them open, Carter told CBS.
At that point, Mateen carefully executed a final three people, including a stranger who was shielding her, Carter said.
“If it wasn’t for that person shielding me it would’ve been me shot and I wouldn’t be sitting here today,” Carter said.
A third survivor, Angel Santiago, told how he was crouched under a sink in a bathroom.
“We just continued to hear gunfire, and I just remember thinking, ‘When is it going to stop?’ Because if it was personal, usually that shouldn’t last too long, so I kept hearing gunfire over and over and over again and it kept getting louder and closer, and I can actually start to smell, I don’t know, I guess, gun powder. Kind of smells like when firecrackers go off.
“We didn’t want to attract attention, but the gunfire kept getting closer and closer, and at one point, everyone was like, ‘Shh, be quiet! Be quiet!’ and that’s when bullets start going through the stall wall towards us.”
Santiago said he was struck by bullets on his left foot and right knee and was grazed by a third bullet.
The first victim of the nightclub shooting in hospital arrived shortly after 2 a.m. and was relatively stable, giving doctors working the overnight shift hope that any others would arrive in a similar condition.
Then five more came, in much worse shape, and then more, and more still, until so many bleeding people were lining up in the emergency room that even hardened trauma surgeons and nurses were brought to tears.
“They were dropped off in truckloads, in ambulanceloads,” said Dr. Kathryn Bondani.
The hospital ran out of ambulances, so firefighters, police and truck-driving citizens ferried the injured.