ORLANDO, Fla. – Miguel Leiva didn't listen when gunman Omar Mateen told patrons huddled in a bathroom at Pulse Orlando nightclub to come out or else they'd die.
"Fifteen or 20 of us, maybe even 30 of us, stayed in the stall," the Miami man, who was in visiting his girlfriend in Orlando, said.
They stayed there for about four hours.
"We just stayed quiet, and everybody's phone kept ringing," Leiva said. "The only way we knew to, like, let our families know, you know, we're OK, we're OK, was just to record it and let them hear that we're trying to be quiet and send the video."
Leiva sent videos to his worried girlfriend, who got word of the shooting.
"She's asking me, 'Are all those people dead next to you?'" Leiva said. "There was one cup in the bathroom and we rinsed the cup, trying to give everybody a little bit of water."
Leiva suffered two gunshot wounds in the Orlando nightclub massacre and got out of the bathroom when an officer dragged him out and the SWAT team moved in.
"We were just waving our hands so they can see that we're alive, but we were still trying to be quiet," Leiva said. "So, finally, they start pulling people out, and it was so bad, like, we had to step over bodies."
Leiva said he can't stop thinking about the people who didn't make it out alive.
"Half of those people were in the bathroom with me," he said.
A GoFundMe account has been established to help pay for Leiva's medical expenses.
