Survivors, victims' families tour Pulse nine years after mass shooting

Yahoo

a day ago

For Marissa Delgado, the empty Pulse nightclub holds joyful memories of dancing with friends on Latin night and dark reminders of the worst moments of her life.
This week, she plans to step into the shuttered club for the first time since the early hours of June 12, 2016 when an armed gunman stormed inside and started firing, killing 49 and injuring scores of others, including Delgado who still carries bullet and shrapnel inside her.
Delgado sees the visit as a way to move forward and a chance to ease a bit of the immense grief, sadness and trauma that still weighs on her. But Monday, she admitted, she was still torn about her plans.
'It could help me,' she said. 'It could backtrack me. It could bring back a bad feeling,' she added. 'I don't know. I'm very scared.'
The city of Orlando plans to demolish the club's building and erect a memorial on its site. But starting Wednesday afternoon and continuing this week it is offering families of those killed and survivors of the shooting a chance to see inside before the structure is torn down. The building has been closed and surrounded by a temporary memorial to the victims for years.
Relatives of 24 of the 49 people killed plan to go inside starting late Wednesday as do about 70 survivors, city officials said, though they know some may decide once they arrive that they cannot go through the doors.
The building has been cleaned and sanitized since the massacre nine years ago,but bullet holes still dot the inside walls.
Portions of the walls have large holes where people tried to escape. There is no furniture inside, however, so the visitors will see only barren rooms.
FBI agents trained with helping victims and survivors will accompany the tours. They will offer support and be able to show where the dance floor, the stage, the bar, the bathrooms — where some people were held hostage for hours — and the dressing rooms were located, said Donna Wyche, a mental health specialist for the city, who is helping to coordinate the tours.
The agents also will be able to show visitors, if they ask, the exact spots where many of the victims fell.
'They may want to stand or be in the place where their loved one died,' Wyche said.
The city is holding the tours — which are not open to the public — at the request ofvictims' families and survivors.
'It's not closure. But it is part of the journey of grief,' Wyche said Wednesday while standing outside of the Pulse building. 'We've heard them. We've listened to them. And they've said it very clearly: 'We want to see it one last time. We want to be in that sacred place, one more time.''
Christine Leinonen's son Christopher 'Drew' Leinonen, 32, and his boyfriend Juan Guerrero were both killed in the shooting. She is traveling from Polk County to Orlando for a late Wednesday afternoon visit.
She has never been inside the club before and doesn't know what she expects to see or feel — but said she is determined go inside no matter what.
'I just want to see where my son took his last breath, where he bled to death,' Leinonen said. 'I owe it to him.'
Leinonen said her son was shot nine times. Sometimes, she tries to imagine the pain he felt from the bullets, and the shock and terror as he lay helpless on the dance floor, waiting for aid that never came.
She wants to see the last things he saw, she said, and breathe the air he breathed.
'I'm never going to actually know what he felt…but I have to get closer,' she said. 'I have to get close to my son's reality. I'm never going to get closure. I'm not trying to get closure.'
About 250 people are expected to tour, many of them relatives but also friends or clergy members who victims and survivors have asked to accompany them. The city will have mental health counselors on site, too, to speak with any visitors who want that help.
Delgado, 38, who lives in Clermont, has a friend going with her. She expects she'll hold her hand tightly during their tour Friday morning.
Despite what she's faced, including hospital stays and countless therapy sessions, Pulse still sometimes also means 'great memories' when she thinks about about all the time she and friends danced and listened to music at the club on south Orange Avenue.
Pulse was billed by its founders as 'the hottest gay bar in Orlando' but it was popular with a large crowd — gay and straight. The club's theme on the night of the shooting was Latin night, when Pulse became a crossroads of the Latino and gay communities.
'It had such a great vibe,' Delgado said. 'I remember how great everyone was.'
Not all the survivors of the Pulse shooting want to go back inside.
Leonel Melendez Jr. — who was shot multiple times and whose parents were told he might not survive his first days in the hospital — said he's not interested.
Every year, he dreads mid-June, when he is reminded again of the worst night of his life.
'The whole thing just brings bad memories,' he said of the Pulse nightclub building. 'But I try not to feel sad. Pulse to me is like a cut, or a wound. I know that it happened. But with time, it heals.' he said. 'But the scar will always be there.'
During the shooting, bullets tore through the back of his head and ripped apart his left leg. His good friend Javier Jorge-Reyes was killed.
For two weeks, Melendez — 38 at the time — was in intensive care in critical condition. He was on a respirator for 10 days and endured several surgeries. His parents, Nicaraguan immigrants, still call it a milagro, a miracle, that he is alive.
Today, Melendez can no longer hear out of one of his ears. And he struggles with physical pain and the emotional toll of the shooting.
'It's just very hard,' he said. 'It's a lot of mixed feelings, mixed emotions. Emotionally, it's very sad that my friend is no longer here.'
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer toured the building nine years ago, after the FBI, which investigated the shooting, turned the building back to the city. He visited again more recently.
'It's a very emotional thing. Each person is going to experience it, I suspect, very much differently,' he said.
'Nothing can bring those 49 back. Nothing can cure the mental anguish that so many people have gone through,' Dyer said. 'There are different phases of grief, and everybody experiences it somewhat differently. I would hope that a site visit would be helpful to some, but I would also hope that the completion of the memorial would help everybody,' he said, speaking to reporters outside the club Wednesday.
Building a Pulse memorial has been a drawn-out, controversial affair. Orlando took over the effort in late 2023 after the collapse of the onePulse Foundation.
A demolition date has not been set, but city officials said the entire building will be razed, though the iconic Pulse sign will likely be saved.
The new memorial — now estimated to cost $12 million — should be built by the end of 2027. Early plans show a reflection pool where the club's dance floor stood.
An 18-member citizens' advisory group that includes victims' families, survivors and others helped choose the design. Though there was eventual agreement, some members initially wanted to save the building.
Joshua Hernandez, who survived the shooting, will travel to Orlando from his home in Puerto Rico this week but is still not sure if he is ready to step inside the Pulse building.
Hernandez had just left the dance floor to go to the bathroom when the shooting started. He was shot in his left arm and in the stomach and lay on the floor for nearly three hours until police killed the gunman and rescued him.
He was in the hospital for two weeks.
'Probably yes,' he said about taking the tour. 'It probably will help me heal. … But every day I have this on my mind. It's still like yesterday.'
Hernandez is frustrated there is still no permanent memorial
'It's been nine years. I don't want it to be 20 years and still no memorial,' he said. 'I'm ready to finish this facet of my life.'
Skyler Swisher of the Sentinel staff contributed to this story.