Survivor: Orlando Shooter Wanted to Spare Black Victims
Some were dead, others moaned in agony.
“He wasn’t going to stop killing people till he was killed”, she told reporters from Florida Hospital Orlando, where she’s recovering. Her words transported a rapt audience to the horrific moments of early Sunday, when a nightclub turned into a slaughterhouse. Carter said she along with one of her friends ran outside and initially escaped the area, but soon realized a third friend was missing. Her friends’ parents drove them to Pulse that evening after they saw it had five-star reviews on Google.
The woman was with two other friends and they were getting ready to leave when the shooting started. “Blood is everywhere”, Carter said. A man in front of her blocked at least one of the shots, protecting Carter. Carter, Murray, and Murray’s cousin Tiara Parker were visiting Orlando from Philadelphia and went to Pulse on the recommendation of Google Maps, PBS reports.
My friend Jeff was in front of me, there were a couple of other people surrounding us but I believe overall there were about maybe 15 to 20 people in that handicapped stall, just hiding.
At 2 a.m., just before the club was about to close, Carter tapped at her phone to order an Uber ride.
“That’s when the bullets started going through the stall wall towards us …” “I was so confused”.
Carter said she was too injured and afraid to move out of the bathroom. Carter insisted on going back inside for her friend.
“He said, “hey, you” to someone on the floor inside the bathroom, and shot them”.
It all seemed so unreal.
A Philadelphia woman recounted the frightening hours she spent locked in a bathroom with a gunman at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
WATCH: Orlando nightclub survivor Angel Colon describes attacker shooting him. This was very real.
Carter and another survivor, Angel Santiago, spoke Tuesday afternoon from Florida Hospital in Orlando. She also said he heard him pledge support to ISIS. He said he wanted America to stop bombing his country. “You know, and it’s just like, there’s only so much we can do on the road”.
“He said, ‘Hey you!’ and shot another person, then another person who I’m told shielded me with their body”, Carter said. “‘I need you as fast as I can.’ Every answer I got was, ‘I’ll be right there'”. “I didn’t want to feel any more pain”.
“I was begging for God to take the soul out of my body, because I didn’t want to feel any more pain”.
At times, she said the shooter referenced snipers and implied he was not acting alone. Over the next long minutes, people texted loved ones and tried to call 911 themselves.
Before police entered, she said the gunman backed toward the stall.
“It sounded like he was communicating with other people involved in it”, Carter said, noting that when police arrived outside he said, “It’s OK, we have snipers outside”.
“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. “I was able to sit up and pull my left leg from underneath the person who was killed in front of me”. “I thought I was shot a third time but it ended up being a graze”.
She read it and told the story of those hours in the bathroom without breaking down once, then suddenly sobbed uncontrollably as she was wheeled away.
A members of the SWAT team dragged her through the grass to an ambulance, Carter said.