Orlando nightclub shooting survivors tell Jeremy Kyle about horrors inside Pulse where Omar Mateen killed 49
Emotional first-person account of attack on LGBT community
THREE survivors of the Orlando nightclub massacre opened up about the horror attack on The Jeremy Kyle Show.
Talking via video link Jeanette, Evans and Letty described how they were all inside the Pulse nightclub when mentally ill Omar Mateen, 29, slaughtered 49 people and wounded 53 more in a depraved shooting spree.
Letty described her horror at how a night on the dancefloor turned into a nightmare and spoke of being covered in blood and climbing over bodies to escape.
She told Jeremy: “I was in the dance room.
“I thought it was fireworks so I kept dancing then I saw everyone dropping to the floor.
"I'm on the floor thinking 'what do I do? Do I get up and run for my life or play dead?’
"I got up and I ran.
"I was bleeding all over the place because I had been cut on glass.
He didn’t show any emotion. I can’t fathom how calm he was
Evans
"I was running over people, there were bodies everywhere and I couldn't tell who was hiding and who had been shot."
Evans told how he watched the gunman, who was killed in a shoot-out with police, calmly stalk the club picking off people.
He said: “I was leaning against a wall by the bar when I heard gun shots.
“I ran into a storage room. I thought I was going to die, I thought my friends were dead.
“Everyone had ran in different directions.
“I ran into a dead end and though I was going to be shot dead. I held my body against the door because I didn’t want anyone to get into the room.
“When I cracked open the door I could see him at the VIP area.
“He was just standing there shooting.
“He didn’t show any emotion. I can’t fathom how calm he was.”
Jeanette, 37, said she was angry that it had taken an incident like this to get people to pay attention to the LGBT community.
She said she had gone out that night as she was “feeling down”.
RELATED STORIES
She added: “The night was going well. I had my drink then all of a sudden, around 2 o’clock in the morning they did the last call for alcohol and there were shots.
“I could just hear them going ‘boom, boom, boom’.
“People were going down because they wanted to avoid the line of fire.
“People were going down because they were being shot.
“It was extremely terrifying.
“I felt it had to be some sort of hate crime.
“We go to Pulse for a good time, we don’t have great security.
“It’s just $10 on the door to get in. It’s a bunch of people having a good time.”
During the special episode Jeremy was joined by his close friend and the show's therapist Graham Stanier who cried as he listened to the first-person accounts.
Speaking of the moment he heard the news he said: “I was in complete disbelief that somebody could commit a hate crime of this nature against the LGBT community.
There were bodies everywhere and I couldn't tell who was hiding and who had been shot
Letty
“As a gay man myself I have a close affinity to the LGBT community. But it doesn't matter if it happens here or in Orlando.
"It is still very painful to think that 49 people are now lying in a morgue in Orlando and that apparently is because they loved the wrong person according to the person who killed them."
ISIS inspired Mateen rang his wife two hours into his killing spree.
SWAT teams saved 30 hostages but not before he had killed dozens inside the club, popular with the LGBT community.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368.