Creative Writing: Airport Attack

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Auburn student Calen Santos was on the phone with his mom, sitting in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday afternoon when he looked over his shoulder and saw the gunman. "I heard a scream, and I turned and looked over my shoulder," Santos said. "I saw him. I saw him and then I saw the gun. I just fell to the ground. People were running and screaming, but I just fell to the ground." Santos was waiting on his plane at the airport just north of Miami, getting ready for his flight back to school at Auburn when the shooting began, he said. He was sitting at his gate in Terminal 2 when he heard a woman behind him say there was an active shooter at the airport. "I googled Fort Lauderdale Airport and that was the first thing …show more content…

A man, Mike DiSanti, and his wife Mary, helped Santos get out of the airport alive. He credits the two strangers, and God, with risking their lives to get him safely out of the airport. "As I'm laying there, this man picked me up by my arm," Santos said. "He picked me up, and his wife, who I was laying on the ground with, and said 'Come on.' But when he was reaching to help me up, these people came by and trampled him." Mike suffered a broken rib as a result of the trampling, but it didn't stop him from helping Santos and Mary get out of the airport. "It broke his rib, but he still picked us up, and we ran," Santos said. The three made it down their gate's jet bridge, down a flight of stairs and onto the airport's concrete tarmac, along with hundreds of other people trying to escape the madness that ensued inside the airport. "We went outside, and we were all standing there," he said. "I thought everything was okay, so I called my mom again. I told her I was okay, but after that, I guess they didn't get him or something." Confusion and chaos reigned the airport for several hours, even after authorities told news media that they had caught the man, Esteban Santiago, who is accused of opening fire at the Florida airport, killing five people and leaving six others with gunshot …show more content…

He said at the time he thought maybe the shooter had gotten loose or that there had been multiple assailants. He didn't know because no one was telling them anything, he said. "Whenever I got out of the airport is when I felt the safest, he said. "They moved us behind a building, and there were at least 300 of us standing against this building. No one was telling us anything. We thought there were multiple shooters because of the timespan that it latest." It wasn't until later that authorities started telling Santos and the other where to go, and he wasn't allowed to leave the chaotic airport until almost 8 p.m. For almost six hours after the shooting, Santos and others waited outside the airport near a building workers were using for construction on one of the airport's terminals. When he was finally allowed to leave, Santos found his way to a mall to try to find a place to charge his phone. He stayed at an Apple Store nearby until his dad came and picked him up. Later, he got to talk to his mom again. "My mom, she was so distraught, because she was on the phone with me when it was all going down," he said. "She was so terrified, and I thought she was going to have a heart attack because she was so scared. Her voice was like sheer

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