On the Dear World website, Poma tells how she struggled to return to the normalcy of being a mom in the wake of the shooting. One of the subjects is Barbara Poma, owner of Pulse nightclub. “We hope when people read these, they see themselves,” Fogarty said, “even though the subjects have gone through something extraordinary and unimaginable and hopefully something very few people ever have to experience firsthand.” The on-skin messages are the beginnings of stories the subjects wanted to tell, he said. The portraits are published online at Photographing the Pulse survivors was one of the most emotional and technically in-depth projects they’ve done, Dear World founder Robert Fogarty said. Scrawled across his arms: “IN THE DARKNESS OF MY HOSPITAL ROOM, I FORGAVE HIM.” The photographs are accompanied with small essays written by the subjects.
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Another survivor, Angel Colon, was shot six times and survived. Pulse survivor Angel Santiago, who hid under a bathroom sink and was shot in the knee and foot, wrote “NOWHERE LEFT TO HIDE” across his right arm and left hand. The subjects are typically photographed with messages scrawled in black marker across a part of their body. The group has taken photos of victims of the 2011 Joplin tornado, refugees from Syria and South Sudan and survivors of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
GAY BAR SHOOTING CRIME SCENE PHOTOS SERIES
Mateen was shot and killed by police after a three-hour standoff.ĭelgado is one of 25 people involved in the shooting - survivors, family members, friends, the club owner - profiled in a series of dramatic black-and-white portraits by New Orleans-based Dear World, a group that travels the globe photographing conflict and disaster victims. “It was horrific.”Ī year ago Monday, gunman Omar Mateen opened fire inside Pulse, a popular LGBT club in Orlando, with a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock pistol, killing 49 patrons and injuring 53 others in the worst mass shooting in U.S. “I knew it was a loved one trying to reach that person and they were never ever going to pick up that phone again,” Delgado said in an interview with USA TODAY. As he entered the club through a patio door that night, he saw bleeding and bullet-torn bodies strewn across the dance floor, many of them slumped on top of one another, their phones ringing next to them.
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Dozens of them, he said, ringing incessantly and spinning in pools of their owners’ blood, the only sound in an otherwise quiet nightclub.ĭelgado, 45, an Eatonville Police officer, was one of the first responders to the June 12, 2016, Pulse nightclub shooting.
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More than anything else, Omar Delgado remembers the phones. Watch Video: Family, friends remember victims of Pulse attack