Survivor: Killer Shot Wounded People on Ground

Doctors and nurses at Orlando Regional Medical Center on Tuesday recounted the awful aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting, with trauma surgeon Chadwick Smith recalling how he had to wake up sleeping colleagues with phone calls after 2am. "This is not a drill, this is not a joke," he told them, per the AP. And everyone answered, "I'll be right there." At the same news conference, survivor Angel Colon described his harrowing ordeal inside the club. He was shot in the leg in an initial burst of gunfire and fell to the ground, getting trampled by people fleeing for the exits. At that point, Colon saw the gunman enter another room, and he hoped that others in the club might subdue him. Soon, however, the gunman re-emerged, only to begin shooting people he'd already wounded.

"He was shooting everyone on the floor to make sure they were dead," Colon said, per USA Today. Colon nearly became one of the fatalities: The gunman shot a woman on the ground next to him, then fired twice at Colon, hitting him in the hand and the hip. "I'm laying down so he won't know I'm alive," Colon said. Finally, the shooter moved on, and eventually a police officer arrived and pulled Colon out of the building. "I will love you guys forever," he told the medical staff at the hospital. (The shooter, Omar Mateen, used gay dating apps and had been to the club multiple times.)