DJ Ray Rivera was spinning records at Pulse nightclub when gunman Omar Seddique Mateen opened fire on the crowd of more than 300 people in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, June 12, at 2:02 A.M.
“I thought it was someone lighting firecrackers,” Rivera, a.k.a. DJ Infinite, told The Daily Beast. “So I turned the music down, and heard some more. I turned the music off.”
As Us Weekly previously reported, Mateen killed 49 people in the worst mass shooting in American history. Prior to the attack, the 29-year-old U.S. citizen allegedly placed a call to 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS. Officials told CNN he also mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers just moments before committing the horrific act of violence at Orlando’s popular gay nightclub.
Rivera was performing on the patio when people started racing into that part of the club. “I ducked behind my DJ booth,” he told The Daily Beast. “People were running from the main room, out to the patio, which leads into the parking lot. It emptied out quickly. Basically everybody was just panicking. I looked inside and saw people were laying on the floor in the main club.”
That’s when Rivera says a man and a woman joined him in hiding behind the DJ booth. When the man made a run for it to the parking lot, Rivera stayed with the female and helped her escape to safety.
“It’s just one of those things, man,” he said. “I never imagined I would be at anything like this. It was so terrible.”
Mateen held 30 patrons hostage for three hours until authorities used an armored vehicle to break down the door of the building at 5 a.m. SWAT officers then shot and killed the suspect.
A GoFundMe page started by Equality Florida, the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, has already raised more than $2 million for the victims and their families.
