The back-to-school buying season filled the bustlingWalmart in El Paso, Texas, on a typical Saturday, and shoppers included many who’d come from the city’s Mexico neighbor, Ciudad Juárez, across the border a mile away.
Someone shoved Patricia into a bathroom stall — “She doesn’t know who saved her,” says Arturo’s great-niece Jacklin Luna — but in the chaos Arturo was lost. By the time police arrived and the shooter surrendered, he was among 22 people fatally shot, with another 27 wounded.
Thirteen hours later, the carnage of America’s mass epidemic of gun violence would unfold again in another city.
The Saturday-night revelers in Dayton, Ohio’s popular Oregon District entertainment zone included Holly Redman, 31, and her friend James Williams, 50, who’d just left the crowded Ned Peppers bar around 1 a.m. “We walked across the street and into a bar called Newcom’s, and as soon as we walked in,” says Williams, “the gunfire started going off.”
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Mark Lambie/El Paso Times via Imagn Content Services, LLC/USA Today Network/Sipa
For the survivors and witnesses themselves, their accounts recall the terror and tears, heartbreak and heroism — and the haunting images they can’t shake.
There was Dion Green, 37, whose father, 57-year-old Derrick Fudge, died in his arms in Dayton.
“The bullets stopped. I tried to get up. I did get up. My dad, he didn’t,” Green tells PEOPLE, recounting his dad’s last moments. “I told him I love him. Man, he was a great father.”
Maria Lopez, 27, was shopping in Walmart in El Paso and initially didn’t realize the popping noises she was hearing was gunfire. But then the full scope of the horror became clear.
“The screams were worse than the gunfire,” she tells PEOPLE. “I keep hearing the screams.”
John Olga, 61, drove his wife 61-year-old Gloria Irma Marquez to the store and agreed to meet her at the McDonald’s in the store.
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“Two minutes later I heard the ‘boom boom,'” Olga says.
Jimmy Villatoro’s friends were shot in El Paso. He rushed to the scene to try to save their children.
“They were in a panic, they were crying. There were bodies on the floor. It was not a scene a child should have witnessed. There was desperation in their eyes. They just wanted help. The screaming and the yelling, it stays with me. Thank God I was able to get them out.”
Along with its cover story,PEOPLE has released its updated call to action, with contact information for all voting members of Congress so you can call your representative to express your views on what can be done to stop gun violence.
source: people.com
