'I don't know how I'm here': Colorado gay club shooting victims detail what they did to get out alive

By Phil McCausland and Daniella Silva -

A man managed to escape the deadly shooting at Club Q by crawling over a fence, with seven shots to his body.

His friend

as blood spurted from his gunshot wounded arm.

Another man tried to get up to help the wounded, not realizing that he himself had been shot in the leg.

Meanwhile, the brother of two injured was touring the local hospitals in search of their relatives.

These are just a few of the accounts from victims of the gun attack at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub, where a shooter killed at least five people and wounded 19 others on Saturday night.

Today survivors share the harrowing details of the mass shooting, expressing their gratitude for escaping with their lives, but also their anger at the lingering hatred against the LGBTQ community.

These are some of their testimonials:

Barrett Hudson

Barrett Hudson, 31, was shot seven times in the back before escaping from the late-night gay bar through the back exit.

He climbed on a table outside and crawled over a fence to get help.

“I don't know how I'm here.

I don't know how I'm alive for sure

," Hudson said Tuesday in a video call from his hospital bed.

"But somehow, by the grace of God, I'm here."

Barrett Hudson, 31. NBC News

While waiting for an ambulance that night in Colorado Springs, Hudson, fearing she would not survive, called her father.

"I told him I wanted him.

I told him that I had been shot, ”he recalled with a broken voice, on the verge of tears.

"I wanted, for my peace of mind, to speak to him one last time."

Before the shooting began, Hudson and his friend, Isaiah Aponte, were spending a normal Saturday night at the club.

But less than an hour after they arrived, he said, he heard a sound like balloons popping, mixed with the rumbling bass of the music.

That's when Hudson noticed a club door had closed and saw someone pointing an AR-15-style pistol at a man who had his hands up.

,” Hudson said, and everyone started running.

As he fled, the gunman put seven bullets into his back.

Miraculously, the bullets missed his vital organs and he will be able to walk, doctors told him.

But the road to recovery will be long, and Hudson said he was in terrible pain.

As he spoke, he would occasionally stand up to stretch and ease the pangs, or he would close his eyes, throw his head back, and pause.

“I am very happy to be alive,” he said.

"I am very lucky".

Isaiah Aponte

Aponte, 24, saw Hudson being shot while running, he said Tuesday in an interview from a hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

“I thought they had killed him, because they shot him,” he added.

An Air Force veteran, Aponte said he had been separated from Hudson in the chaos.

He recounted that he overturned a table and lay down on the floor to cover himself, and that with one arm he covered his vital organs.

It was then that the gunman turned to "shoot directly at all the people who were on the dance floor and who were running," Aponte said.

"In the end, the shots went through the table and I ended up with

."

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The shrapnel "is going to be stuck in my arm for the rest of my life," he said.

As blood poured from his wounds, Aponte said he played dead as he watched Richard Fierro, an Army veteran, and others wrestle with the attacker, knocking him to the ground and hitting him with his own weapon.

James and Charlene Slaugh

James Slaugh, 33, called police as he, his sister Charlene Slaugh, her boyfriend and another friend were hiding after all four were shot:

They had gone to Club Q, where James Slaugh met his boyfriend eight months earlier, to cheer up his sister after a breakup.

She remains in critical but stable condition, he said from his hospital bed Tuesday.

James Slaugh claimed that customers who were not injured were given bandages after the shooting.

In this image taken from video, James Slaugh speaks to The Associated Press Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, from his bed at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colo. AP

“Someone hugged me and said, 'You were shot in the arm.

But don't worry, you're going to be safe, you're alive, you're fine,' and he kissed me on the forehead.

And that made me cry," he added.

When it was all over, James Slaugh claimed that he was separated from his sister and that the authorities did not hear him as he yelled: “She's my sister!

That's my sister," as they took her away.

He was taken to another hospital in a police car.

Mark Slaugh, James's brother, woke up before dawn on Sunday to receive a message in the family's group chat that his brothers were injured.

He sped to Colorado Springs from his Denver home.

He found his brother in one hospital, but his sister was not listed in the records of another.

“I was just like, 'No, please let them be okay.

I hope you are well.

I hope they're not dead.

I hope they can recover from this.

I hope they can continue to meet their goals and objectives in life,'" she stated. "It's very, very scary to think that someone has decided to take everything away from them, take away their future."

He claimed that they were finally able to identify Charlene from a tattoo, but that he was unable to see her for hours because the floor where she was admitted was locked for security.

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At the hospital, Charlene Slaugh had a collapsed lung inflated and underwent

.

She had pieces of her colon and intestines removed,” said Mark Slaugh, who started a GoFundMe to help her siblings cover medical expenses.

The bullet that struck James Slaugh shattered the bone in his arm, requiring

from below the shoulder to above the elbow, he said in an interview after completing his first round of physical therapy.

Several more months of therapy await him to fully regain movement in his arm and hand, he said.

But this hasn't deterred James Slaugh, even though he believes this shooting was the result of hate "targeting the LGBTQ community."

"I'm not going to back down," he

said, pointing to the huge number of messages he has received.

"We're here to support each other. And the world is starting to show it. So no matter how many bullets someone fires, there's going to be a lot more love, and that's a lot stronger than any bullet."

Jerecho Loveall

Jerecho Loveall, 30, claimed he was still trying to deal with his emotions after surviving the attack.

He recalled that he had just finished dancing and was taking a break when suddenly "all you could hear was gunshots, rapid gunshots."

Then

"I'm still in shock and I'm not able to process everything that happened," he said.

Although Loveall couldn't quite see the shooter, he noted that he was wearing "a brown protective vest and the barrel of the gun was flashing rapidly."

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When "the shots stopped," Loveall said he tried to get up to make sure his friends were okay.

It was then that he realized that he had been shot.

“I was worried about the people I was with,” added Loveall, who has been visiting the club for more than a decade.

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Club Q, many of the victims said, was a safe haven, one of the few in Colorado Springs for the LGBTQ community.

The attack tore apart a major site, Loveall said, saying the gunman chose to target people he didn't know or understand.

“There is no need to take lives or cause pain and suffering to people that you don't know, that you don't understand,” he said.

"It's unnecessary violence, and we're not going to get anywhere by spreading hate."