Hours later, Carter heard: “Move away from the wall!” That was the police, who blew a hole in the bathroom wall. They told Mateen to put his gun down and he refused, prompting cops to shoot him. Carter recalled pipes bursting and water filling up the floor.
“If they don’t get to me soon, I'll die in pile of bloody water,” she recalled thinking.
Parker said one of her friends didn’t make it, but the other survived.
“I really don’t think I’m going to get out of there,” Carter recalled. “I made peace with God. Just please take me, I don’t want any more. I was just begging God to take the soul out my body.”
Carter also penned a poem about the tragedy:
The guilt of feeling grateful to be alive is heavy.
Wanting to smile about surviving but not sure if the people around you are ready
As the world mourns, the victims killed and viciously slain, I feel guilty about screaming about my legs in pain.
Because I could feel nothing like the other 49 who weren’t so lucky to feel this pain of mine.
I never thought in a million years that this could happen.
I never thought in a million years that my eyes could witness something so tragic.
Looking at the souls leaving the bodies of individuals, looking at the killer’s machine gun throughout my right peripheral. Looking at the blood and debris covered on everyone’s faces. Looking at the gunman’s feet under the stall as he paces.
The guilt of feeling lucky to be alive is heavy. It’s like the weight of the ocean’s walls crushing uncontrolled by levies. It’s like being drug through the grass with a shattered leg and thrown on the back of a Chevy. It’s like being rushed to the hospital and told you’re gonna make it when you laid beside individuals whose lives were brutally taken.
The guilt of being alive is heavy.
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