Following Shooting at Gateway Center in Orlando
Some of the 600 911 calls made from panicked employees at Orlando's Gateway Center during last week's shooting were released Tuesday. The calls are just part of the investigation into the shootings at the Gateway Center last Friday that killed one person and left five hospitalized.
Three patients were released from the Orlando Regional Medical Center on Monday and a fourth was released Tuesday. Panicked employees whispered pleas to 911 dispatchers to send help during the shooting while the gunman's whereabouts were unknown.
"Hurry! Hurry, please," one caller pleaded. Asking question after question, 911 dispatchers tried to find out who was behind the gunfire. "Do you know this person? Who shot you? Who shot you?" 911 dispatchers asked employees as they called in to report the shooting. "Oh no! There's people running out of my building at work. Somebody just told me there's a shooting," one caller told a dispatcher.
"People are bleeding, that's all I know. He's coming this way! He's coming this way! I have a shooter coming at me," one witness told 911 dispatchers. People are running. I'm getting in my car right now. I saw a man walk by the glass with something in his hand. I'm not sure it's that's the shooter."
"I can't stay on the phone. He may come back." - Caller A UPS driver told the dispatcher that he had seen the shooter, but saw someone lying on the floor who said he had been shot. He described blood on a door handle "on the way out," and said he wasn't sure who it was from. One breathless caller said he "just barely" saw the gunman.
He described the shooter to a 911 dispatcher as being a white man, 5 foot eight inches or 5 foot 10 inches, short black hair, weighing about 190 to 200 pounds and wearing a gray vest and blue jeans.
"I think he left," the caller said. "Multiple fatalities. Multiple injuries. It sounded like at least 13 shots or more." One caller told the dispatcher that he believed the shooter was a former employee.
The eighth floor of the downtown high-rise is still a crime scene as detectives continue to build their case against alleged gunman 40-year-old Jason Rodriguez.
Friends of Otis Beckford, the person killed in the shooting, said that no matter what was going on in Rodriguez's life, he didn't have the right to kill.
Rodriguez was taken into custody hours after the shooting.
He remains at the Orange County Jail.
The CEO of RS&H, the firm where the shooting happened, hopes to reopen the office by Friday.
