As more details emerge around what happened inside Club Q, the Colorado Springs gay nightclub that late Saturday night became the scene of Colorado’s latest mass shooting when five people were killed, a man who identified himself as a survivor of the attack has shared a harrowing story on social media.
Barrett Hudson took to Facebook Live on Sunday evening to let friends and loved ones know he was alive and recovering despite being shot seven times inside the LGBTQ bar and venue he visited on Saturday night to take in a drag show. With the bullet wounds in his back, Hudson says he was able to flee the club out a back door, jump a high fence and run to a nearby 7-Eleven before other people helped him.
“I am very, very glad to be alive,” Hudson said in the roughly 13-minute video that he shared from a hospital bed, wires from medical equipment dangling from his chest. He also shared his story from the shooting on his Instagram account.
“I cannot believe I am alive. I should not be alive,” he said in the Facebook video.
Hudson, who according to his Facebook page is a Denver resident from Charlotte, North Carolina, said in the video that he watched the shooter walk into the club with an AR-15-style rifle and start shooting people. The shooter quickly turned the gun on Hudson.
“I got shot seven times in the back,” Hudson said. “I fell down. He kept shooting me. I got up. I ran to the back door. I hopped on the table to climb the fence. And all this is with seven shots in my back.”
After scaling the fence, Hudson said he ran further before having to jump off what he described as a single-level parking structure. He landed hard, injuring his knees, before getting up and running across a street and collapsing in front of the convenience store. There, he said, some people helped him and started counting the bullet holes in his body.
Emergency radio traffic from the night of the attack included first responders trying to coordinate an ambulance for someone with seven gunshot wounds outside the 7-Eleven. Police evidence markers and blood were still visible outside the store at 3502 N. Academy Blvd. on Sunday morning.
Clerks inside the 7-Eleven on Monday referred questions about the shooting to the corporate media office. Representatives for the company did not return an email seeking comment on Monday afternoon.
The area surrounding Club Q was cordoned off by police tape on Monday but a high chain-link fence is visible outside the rear of the building. Beyond that is a high retaining wall separating the rear of the club from the businesses beyond it.
Thinking he was going to bleed to death outside the 7-Eleven, Hudson said he called his dad.
“I really feel for the people that didn’t make it,” he said. “Because they’re the families that are getting phone calls. And I was fortunate enough where I got to call my dad. Even if it was one last time. I got to call him and say bye.”
Hudson was loopy and emotional at various points in the Facebook video. He noted that he was on a mix of morphine, oxycodone and another drug he couldn’t pronounce.
He paused at one point to show the lower part of his torso where he had marks from incisions he said were used to insert a camera into his body and check for internal damage. His back looks much worse than the front of his body, he said.
“All the bullets missed all my organs. Missed my colon. Missed my spine. Y’all can see pictures when I am ready to post some pictures,” he said in the video. “I can feel my feet and my toes.”
With lots of rehabilitation ahead of him, Hudson said he expects to return to Charlotte because he won’t be able to drive himself around in Colorado.
Hudson said he is part of the LGBTQ community and that that community is a target for violence. There was no security at Club Q the night of the attack, he said.
“In our community, we’ve gotta get security. We’ve gotta get security with guns,” Hudson said. “We are targeted more than other places. Gays, transgender, Black Lives Matter, the hate comes after us usually more than other people.”
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