ORLANDO, Fla. _ Some of the first 911 calls made to city dispatchers in the early moments after the Pulse nightclub shooting began on June 12 were released by the city of Orlando on Friday and multiple callers describe barrages of gunfire, and dispatchers trying to tell victims how to treat their wounds until help arrives.
The emotional calls that to start 2:03 a.m. were in 107 pages of transcripts rather than audio form, though, as was ordered by a judge on Oct. 31.
" ... they are just shooting, they are spraying bullets right now, they are spraying bullets," one caller hiding in a closet with seven other people tells an operator.
It was the fourth day this week that records were released. More than five hours of audio calls from 2:18 a.m. to 5:19 a.m. were previously released this week.
The tense moments just after gunman Omar Mateen began shooting are chaotic and show the 911 operators gathering information even as they try to calm victims.
"Do you know what the shooter looks like," one operator asks.
The decision to release the calls was in response to a lawsuit by the Orlando Sentinel and two dozen other media organizations seeking the emergency calls in an effort to shed light on what happened in the club that morning. The judge agreed, saying the calls needed to be released for a "public evaluation" of what law enforcement did inside the club.
Mateen killed 49 people and injured at least 68 others in the Orlando nightclub.
Transcripts of negotiations between Mateen and the police were also previously released.
