While ordering a drink at the Club Q bar in Colorado Springs, Ed Sanders, 63, was shot in the back and leg when a gunman opened fire inside the nightclub. He said the chaos of the shooting immediately gave way to victims helping each other.
Sanders, who lost friends in the shooting over the weekend, said the entire incident happened very quickly.
“The shooting started and I was hit in the back and I turned around and saw him and it was very fast,” Sanders told CNN from his hospital bed Monday. “The second volley took my leg and I fell. Everybody fell, pretty much.”
“After the shooting stopped, people were screaming and people were helping each other,” Sanders said. “Several people asked about me. I said that I was hit, but it didn’t seem that bad. The shot to my back didn’t feel like what it left, which is a big scooped out wound,” he explained, motioning with his hands.
Sanders saw the gunman, but couldn’t make out the words the man uttered as he opened fire by the door.
“It seemed like he was firing from his waist, but it was happening so fast, I didn’t really grasp what was going on until I got shot in the leg,” Sanders said.
While Sanders caught a glimpse of the gunman, he did not see the two people who rushed to stop the shooting.
“I didn’t see who the heroes were,” Sanders said. “God bless them, It could have been a lot worse if they hadn’t stepped in when they did.”
In the initial moments after the gunshots, a wounded Sanders tried to assist the woman who was injured right next to him.
“I put my coat over her. She was shivering and not breathing very well,” he said. “I encouraged her to breathe… and don’t know what happened to her.”
Sanders said he could hear people helping people, some asking for tourniquets. He also lauded the quick police response.
“Police were there in two minutes, but it sounded like an eternity when it was happening, but they were there very fast,” he said.
