Clubbers ran for their lives or played dead for 3 hours
Swat team stormed in shouting: Hands up if you’re alive
WHEN a gunman began firing on the crowded dancefloor, revellers believed it was simply part of the show.
With the music blaring, it was not until Omar Mateen had fired up to 20 shots that his intention to carry out a massacre became clear.
Bodies dropped ‘like dominoes’ as the killer sprayed gunfire into the crowd.
The relentless ‘bang, bang, bang, bang’ of Mateen’s gun can be heard on footage from club-goer Amanda Alvear’s phone – just before the 25-year-old was killed.
Clubbers ran for their lives or hid under bodies and played dead for three hours.
Some sent harrowing texts or called loved ones before they were killed. ‘Mommy I love you... I’m gonna die’, read the final message from Eddie Justice.
When the bloodbath ended, police who found a tangle of bodies on the dancefloor were forced to call out: ‘If you are alive, raise your hand.’ It was 2.02am when Mateen burst into the Pulse club, 17 miles
‘Rapid fire, then change of ammo’
from Disney World, brandishing a 9mm handgun, an AR-15 assault rifle able to fire 45 rounds a minute and magazines containing 100 rounds each.
Bartenders had just called last orders and a DJ had whipped 320 dancers into a frenzy as they enjoyed the final song of the Latin-themed night.
As Mateen unleashed a volley of gunfire from his AR-15 – a civilian version of a military rifle that is legal in Florida – his killing spree was partially masked by the beat of the music.
Survivor Luis Burbano said: ‘No one put two and two together until the fifth and sixth shot. Between ten and 20, that’s when everything really started getting real, and then we all at that point did a “domino effect” fall to the floor.’
Christopher Hansen said: ‘It was like a horror movie. I heard the “boom boom” of bullets, thinking it was a song. I looked behind me and... there were bodies falling down. The guy next to me was shot.’
Javier Antonetti said: ‘ You heard the “bang, bang”. The guy next to me fell and there was blood everywhere.’
One witness said: ‘It was rapid fire, then change of ammo. I could smell the ammo in the air.’
Rob Rick crawled to a DJ booth where a bouncer knocked down a partition to help him escape.
One woman said she hid in a bathroom and pulled dead bodies over herself to hide from Mateen.
Clubber Stanley Almodovar, 23, a pharmacy technician, bravely shoved others away from the gunfire before he was killed. At 2.09am, the nightclub posted a warning on Facebook that read: ‘Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running.’
Nursing student Joshua McGill ran out and saw bullet-riddled Rodney Sumter staggering outside.
Mr Sumter had been shot in the back and both arms. Mr McGill ripped off his own shirt and wrapped it round Mr Sumter’s arm to stop the bleeding, then used Mr Sumter’s shirt as a tourniquet on the other arm. He hugged him to stem the bleeding from his back wound, and bombarded him with questions to keep him conscious. He said: ‘The things I had to say to the guy... while holding him as tight as I could and blood everywhere on me.’
Inside, Mateen’s rampage was slowed by a uniformed off- duty policeman who was working on security. He and two other officers who arrived soon after engaged the killer in a gun battle that forced him to retreat to toilets at the back of the nightclub. Mateen took about 25 hostages who were hiding there, sparking a three-hour siege.
At this point, scores of revellers fled the club. Members of a band crawled out using an air conditioning duct in their dressing room.
As police and Swat teams took up positions, Mateen made three calls to the 911 emergency number in which he pledged allegiance to IS. Confusingly, he also claimed solidarity with Al-Nusra, a bitter rival to Islamic State in Syria, the FBI said, as well as the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston marathon in 2013.
He was ‘cool and calm’, Orlando police chief John Mina said. Over three hours, police negotiators tried to strike a deal for the hostages.
But Mr Mina added: ‘He really wasn’t asking for a whole lot – we were doing most of the asking.’
He said the decision to storm the nightclub came after Mateen began
making threats about ‘bomb vests and explosives’.
Police detonated explosives on an outside wall of the bathroom, then used an armoured vehicle to punch a hole 3ft wide.
The hostages streamed out, followed by the killer firing his handgun. Police engaged in a second shootout, and Mateen was eventually shot dead by heavily-armed Swat officers at 5.35am.
As the death toll was confirmed at 49 – after initial reports included the gunman in the original tally of 50 – some of the victims were named yesterday. Edward Sotomayor, 34, was a brand manager at a travel company, Luis Omar Ocasio- Capo, 20, was among the youngest victims, while Kimberly Morris, 37, had only recently moved to Florida from Hawaii to take care of her mother and grandmother.