Marine veteran Imran Yousuf was hero to dozens during Orlando shooting
Marine veteran Imran Yousuf saved dozens of lives during the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday morning, CBS News reported.
Yousuf, a 24-year-old bouncer at Pulse, heard the first gunshots as he was making rounds and preparing to close the bar just after last call, he said.
“That was a shock. Three or four shots go off and you could tell it was a high-caliber,” Yousuf told CBS’ Mark Strassman. “Everyone froze. I’m here in the back, and I saw people start pouring into the back hallway and they just sardine-pack everyone.”
Yousuf, a Hindu who served as a Marine in Afghanistan, did not come face to face with the gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, during the shooting.
Yousuf told CBS that as he stood in the back hallway, sandwiched between clubgoers, he realized there was only one way to make it out of the club alive: a lone door in the back hallway.
There was one problem: The door, which was beyond Yousuf’s reach, was latched shut at the time and no one dared open it, he told CBS. And, suddenly, in Orlando, Fla., the veteran found himself in an entirely different combat zone.
“I’m screaming, ‘Open the door! Open the door!’ And no one is moving because they are scared,” he explained. “There was only one choice. Either we all stay there and we all die, or I could take the chance. And I jumped over to open that latch, and we got everyone that we can out of there.”
Yousuf estimated that about 60 or 70 people were able to escape through the door. Once he opened the door, people came flooding out of the popular Orlando nightclub.
Prior to his interview with CBS, Yousuf said, he had not fully processed the events that occurred early Sunday morning. However, he became emotional as he spoke about the act of terror to CBS.
“I wish I could have saved more [people] to be honest,” he said, tears spilling out of his eyes. “There are a lot of people that are dead … There are a lot of people that are dead.”
Mateen’s massacre claimed the lives of 49 victims and injured 53 before he was also killed.
