‘We all die or we open the door’

ORLANDO, FLA. • After surviving a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Imran Yousuf didn’t expect he would need his military training for a security job at a club in Orlando.

Yousuf, on the job just a few weeks, was doing a sweep of Pulse nightclub at around 2 a.m. Sunday when he heard the first pop, then another and then another.

“I’m sort of just standing there (thinking) there’s no way that’s a gun … I just clicked, this is a gun … We have to get everyone out,” the former Marine said.

Yousuf, who was honourably discharged April 8 and served in the Afghan war during the bloody push in the summer of 2012, says he’s “still on some kind of alert, especially when working security.”

So when Omar Mateen unleashed a barrage of bullets, Yousuf’s training and instincts kicked in, allowing him to get dozens of frightened patrons out a back door.

“It was like a survival thing. We have the training, you hear gunshots, you have to react,” he said. “Hearing it in a civilian setting just sort of kicks it into high gear.”

When the shooting started, people flooded the club’s back area, a narrow hallway.

“I just kept yelling, ‘Open the door!’ ” he said.

Yousuf surveyed the patrons’ faces and realized they couldn’t find the door.

“The only way you would have known the door was there is if you were staff,” he said. “I could hear the gunman walking toward the back area, so it was a choice between go … There was no other way. It was either we all die, or we open the door.”

So Yousuf lunged across the crowd and shoved the door open. The survivors poured outside to safety.

But Yousuf could still hear shots banging through the club. He could tell it was a high-powered automatic weapon and he was keeping a count of rounds and magazines.

“There was never a moment when it stopped because it was over; it was just because he was changing magazines,” Yousuf said.

Monday afternoon, the former sergeant was still searching for colleagues and friends.

“One of my buddies … he got shot three times and he’s dead and we’re trying to find out where the rest of the staff and everybody else is.”

For now, he’s pretty sure he won’t return to Pulse, unless there was a big event, a memorial, a sign of solidarity with the community.

“For right now it’s the same mindset as the military — once I got out, there’s no way I’m going back in.”