LGBTQ club owners praise customer who rushed gunman in tragic mass shooting
By Spencer Wilson
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (KCNC) — “Everyone else was running away, he ran towards.” LGBTQ club owners are praising a customer who rushed the gunman in the Club Q mass shooting.
Life has been hell for Matthew Haynes, founding partner of Club Q and Nic Grzecka, co-owner of Club Q since Saturday night when a gunman began shooting indiscriminately inside the venue in Colorado Springs.
“It is going to take days, if not weeks or months in this community to wrap its head around the hate, the injuries, the death that came,” Grzecka said Sunday, while at a vigil for the victims.
Both men arrived to the club minutes after the emergency call was made and witnessed people doing their best to assist others into ambulances, find car keys and phones inside, and get people to medical treatment. They also learned about the brave actions of a so far, unnamed customer, who reportedly ran straight at the shooter when they opened fire.
“Saved dozens and dozens of lives, stopped the man cold in his tracks,” Haynes said.
The owners said there was another patron who rushed over to help overpower the shooter and kept him plastered to the ground, while they waited for police to come.
“Colorado Springs police know who those heroes are, but it’s not time for us to tell that story yet,” the owners explained. But they weren’t shy about expressing how thankful they were for the brave actions of those customers.
“One of the first things you learn in active shooter training is to take the shooter down…there is no other way to stop them from getting in there,” Grzecka said. “The person who opens fire in a mass group of people clearly…has something wrong. So there is no warning sign, you just have to be ready…and luckily somebody was.”
The Satellite Hotel in Colorado Springs has offered space for the grieving LGBTQ community to come together and support one another in the meantime, while the club is closed until further notice.
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