Rosa Solis was on the victims inside the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, when an angry gunman opened fire on a crowd of churchgoers.
ABC reports that Solis, who suffered a gunshot wound from the arm, relived her experience once she was discharged from the hospital on Monday night. According to Solis, as shooter Devin Kelley walked down the aisle of the church, he started screaming at the church goers and announced his intentions to kill everyone there.
“Everybody dies motherf*****! -Devin Kelley”
Solis said people panicked and screamed, while young children cried for their parents. Solis said once she was shot in the arm, she slid under a church bench and pretended to be dead as the gunman shot at least 450 rounds.
“I saw bodies with a lot of blood. That’s all I saw because I wasn’t about to get out from where I was hiding. I played dead. I made sure I hid myself good under that bench.”
David Brown, the son of another victim who remains in the hospital recovering, said his mother told him she laid on the floor while the gunman continued to shoot at people while walking up and down the aisle around 15 times.
Rosa Solis pictures,survived Sunday's Texas church shooting https://t.co/RmpQ3ybq2N pic.twitter.com/JFrrIzp8dv
— infowe (@infowe) November 7, 2017
‘She just laid on the floor,” Brown told ABC. ‘The shooter was shooting everybody. I guess he could see everybody trying to run. And then after no one was moving they were just laying on the floor, he walked up and down all the aisles shooting everyone as they laid on the floor, she said.”
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the nightmare ended when 55-year-old plumber, Stephen Willeford, confronted the gunman as he attempted to escape. Willeford wasn’t in attendance when the massacre occurred, but he ran over to the church barefoot and carrying a licensed firearm when his daughter called him and told him people were being shot at.
Willeford shot at Kelley, wounding him as he made a direct hit into his side, in between Kelley’s body armor.
Johnnie Langendorff, 27, noticed the gunshots and ran over to help as well. As Kelley sped away, Langendorff got into a vehicle and chased after the suspect. Langendorff told Good Morning America that Willeford, a man he didn’t previously know, jumped in the truck with him before he began a high-speed chase in pursuit of Kelley.
“The neighbor with the rifle came to my truck and he opened my door and said, ’He shot up the church,’ and got in. He said, ‘chase him’ so that’s what I did. I just chased him….It seemed everybody had headed up to the church. I’m not sure if anybody really realized that he had left and gone that direction.”
A high-speed chase ensued, resulting in Kelley losing control of his truck and crashing it off-road. When authorities arrived, the suspect was dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Authorities are still waiting on official confirmation from the medical examiner’s officer before announcing the cause of death.
“That’s when I put the truck in park,” Langendorff said. ‘The other gentleman jumped out, and had his rifle on him. He didn’t move after that.”
On Monday, authorities announced that the suspect contacted his father shortly after the shootings and told him he didn’t think he was going to “make it.”
Neither Langendorff nor Willeford were injured. Police indicated that without their efforts, the gunman, who was found with several weapons and explosives inside his car, may have ended up killing more people.
“There was no thinking about it,” Langendorff said. “There was just doing. That was the key to all this. Act now. Ask questions later.”
A total of 26 people were killed in the ordeal.
[Feature Photo: AP/Eric Gay]
