‘Pulse is our safe haven’: Friend of Orlando shooting victim
ORLANDO – Josh Mercer crouched down outside the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando on Monday to erect a poster dedicated to a friend who was murdered at the Pulse nightclub in the early morning mass shooting on Sunday.
The poster, adorned with flowers, read, “#OneLove #OneHeart #OnePulse Rest in paradise!”
Mercer, who was born and raised in Orlando, came to the makeshift memorial with his husband, James Carney Mercer. The pair wore matching gray T-shirts, on which they drew hearts around the date of the tragedy and the representation of a pulse on a cardiac monitor.
“This hits hard for me,” he said. “We’re a city built on magic. They are not going to stop us. And I’m not scared. … Honestly, I’m not going to let them win. We stand strong. Orlando strong. We are Pulse.”
Mercer’s friend Emmanuel “Xavier” Valentino was one of 49 people murdered by a terrorist at the popular gay nightclub in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Mercer said he had been awake for 27 hours straight and did not plan on sleeping Monday night. He said he had found it too difficult to sleep, knowing how so many people weren’t lucky enough to wake up on Monday.
Pulse is still the site of an active FBI investigation. Throughout the morning, police officers from various local agencies, such as the Florida Highway Patrol and Orange County Sheriff’s Office, cordoned off the streets surrounding the nightclub at the intersection of South Orange Avenue and West Esther Street.
When two men complained to a highway patrolman state trooper that the roads should open up sooner, he replied, “Well, I want a good investigation. And that will take as long as it takes.”
Mercer said no one had heard from Valentino since the massacre. His family and friends’ worst fears were confirmed at around 5 or 6 a.m. Monday, when his name appeared on a City of Orlando website listing the deceased. He was listed under the name of Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old.
Mercer, who now “makes magic” working at Walt Disney World, said many dancers and entertainers in Orlando go by several names. He and Valentino met in 2010 while working as dancers at the Savoy nightclub in Orlando. He said no one could deny that his friend had “the most energetic, most charismatic personality.”
“The minute you walked in the room, he just lit it up. And he didn’t just light up our nightclubs,” he said. “He lit up our friends’ lives, and so many people are hurting right now. I’m really just sticking onto those great memories. I remember going to work and just being so excited to be around him.”
Mercer told Yahoo News it had been a while since he last saw Valentino, and that it now haunts him.
“About a year ago, and I hate that. I wish more than anything that I could’ve seen him before this happened,” he said. “So many of my friends were at Pulse. About seven of my friends left 20 minutes just before the shootout started at 2 o’clock.”
When asked by Yahoo News what Pulse means to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Orlando, Mercer said that it (as well as the other gay bars and nightclubs in the city) is their safe haven.
“You know, it’s very hard for us to be in public and feel comfortable holding hands or feel comfortable kissing, but when we’re in that structure, when we’re with our family that we choose, that’s our safe haven,” he said.
If he were to define Pulse using one word, he said, it would be “family.” That’s in part why he’s been drawing life pulses on T-shirts and signs to commemorate the shooting victims. He said it symbolizes all of our hearts beating in unison, stopping for a second, and then picking up where they left off — stronger than ever before.
The Orlando Health hospital network said midday Monday that the Orlando Regional Medical Center, which is just 0.6 miles north up South Orange Avenue from the dance club, has treated 44 victims from the shooting.
Nine died and six have been discharged, leaving 29 still in the hospital. Surgeons have performed 26 operations on the victims since the shooting, and six more surgeries are scheduled for the rest of Monday.
“It was difficult, and it’s not just him. There were 48 others: Forty-nine people and one coward,” Mercer said. “One coward.”
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