As new investigation details emerge, Orlando survivor recalls night of terror

As family and friends begin the painful task of laying their loved ones to rest one week after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history last Sunday at an Orlando nightclub, those who came in contact with the lone gunman and survived are just starting to process the carnage he left behind.

Funerals for the victims are scheduled for the next two weeks in Orlando, Puerto Rico and across the country, with some services beginning on Friday. On Sunday, thousands are expected to attend a vigil at an Orlando park held to remember the victims of the shooting.

Patience Carter, a student at New York University, is shown here in a photograph posted to her Facebook page on Aug. 31, 2014.the

Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire at popular gay nightclub Pulse, killing 49 people and injuring 53 more, just as hundreds were winding down a night of revelry.

The rampage stretched on for hours before police used an armored vehicle to plow through a wall of the establishment, killing Mateen in a gunfight near the dead and wounded who were holed up inside the bloodied bathroom of the club.

By about 5 a.m., the siege had ended. But for those who survived the massacre, the healing process is just beginning.

“Some days I can get through without crying at all,” said one survivor, Patience Carter, in an interview with the NewsHour. “This stone-cold face. I’m just recounting the event over and over and over in my head.”

Carter, 20, was on the second day of a week-long vacation. She was traveling from Philadelphia with her friend, Tiara Parker, and Parker’s family, when they found an advertisement online describing Pulse as the hottest nightclub in Orlando.

“We decided to go out for some fun,” she said.

Reaching the club around midnight, they duo met up with Parker’s 18-year-old cousin, Akyra Murray, a student-athlete who recently graduated near the top of her class at a Philadelphia high school and was preparing for her freshman year at college.

The trip was supposed to be a celebration of her achievements. A few hours later, after a night of dancing, all three women had been shot. Murray was dead.

“We were living it up,” Carter told the NewsHour by phone from an Orlando hospital. “It was like the best experience. It was my first time being at a club in Orlando. Everyone was so open and welcoming.”

But the club that many described as a safe haven for the LGBTQ community will now stand as a memorial to the dead.

The Orlando Regional Medical Center said in a statement released on Sunday that 18 people remain hospitalized as they recover from their wounds. Carter is among them.

The New York University student, who is about to enter her junior year, was shot in both legs, leaving a femur bone shattered. She will have to re-learn how to walk.

“I would have never thought in a million years that this would be the outcome,” she said.

Nick Tucciarelli and his daughter Campbell visit a vigil for the victims of the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S. June 14, 2016. Photo by Jim Young/Reuters

As federal investigators search for clues on Mateen’s motivations for the mass killing, one person who said he suspected that his former coworker could be capable of a massacre was Daniel Gilroy.

The one-time police officer worked in security with Mateen for about a year at a Port St. Lucie, Florida, gated community.

He said Mateen, who was a police academy cadet, seemed fascinated with Gilroy’s background as an officer.

But Gilroy told the NewsHour this week he had repeatedly warned his superiors that Mateen was a ticking time bomb who sometimes mentioned wanting to kill black people. He said Mateen used racial slurs and made misogynistic comments as the two talked between shifts inside a security booth.

After a year of complaints, a racially charged comment made by Mateen and directed at Gilroy’s African-American friend was the tipping point.

“I went home I slept on it,” Gilroy said. “I came back, I told him, ‘We’re no longer friends. We don’t talk, we don’t send me emails. Don’t send me text messages.'”

Instead, over days, Mateen sent him a flurry of text messages and phone calls. Gilroy said he feared for his girlfriend’s life and tried again to approach his superiors before finally quitting in March 2015.

“These text message were like ‘You betrayed me,’ ‘I thought you were my friend,’ ‘I feel stabbed in the back,’ ‘I thought you were an upstanding guy,’ Gilroy recalled. “Some people have good days and bad — he just had bad days.”

Carter and other witnesses inside the club, along with investigators, say Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State while speaking with 911 dispatchers during the assault. He also posted the same vow on Facebook, according to Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security committee.

Former classmates, friends and coworkers who knew Mateen said they remember a stout and awkward child growing up who never spoke of his Muslim faith but had a penchant for trouble and aggression.

Mateen was often bullied and was suspended dozens of times in elementary school before obtaining a general education degree at the age of 16. He moved from job to job before settling into the fields of law enforcement and security and learned how to shoot a gun. The once-portly child now worked out obsessively and often seemed distressed. A short marriage to his first wife ended abruptly after accusations that he beat her in fits of rage.

“He acted hot and cold and weird,” Gilroy recalled.

As the investigation continues, Carter is just beginning to grapple with the extent of her injuries.

Doctors told her it will be four two six months before she recovers from her injuries. She is still uncertain of when she will be released from the hospital.

“Right now my goal is to focus on getting better, making sure I can get up and get around without needing a walker,” she said. “My leg is messed up pretty bad.”

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden pause as they place flowers at a makeshift memorial for shooting victims of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S., June 16, 2016. Photo By Carlos Barria/Reuters

She said despite the grisly memories she will carry with her, one bright spot this week was a meeting with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday, both of whom she called “sincere.”

“It was amazing,” she said. “President Obama really took the time to speak to each and every family. Every individual in the room got a chance to say what they needed to say to him. They got a chance to hug him.”

Carter said she expects it will take a long time to heal, but said the outpouring of support has helped her and others as she looks toward recovery.

“Knowing that people all over the world are coming together, sending us all their love — that’s what we need,” she said. “That’s what the families who lost their children need.”

Daniel Moritz-Rabson and Andi Wang contributed reporting.