Gabriel Eslami can't forget the smell of gun smoke in the air, the screams of the wounded and the bodies strewn all around him after a brutal massacre outside a popular Birmingham, Alabama, left four people dead and 17 injured on Saturday.
Eslami himself was one of the victims, he told The Washington Post, suffering bullets that penetrated his leg and buttocks and a cut on his penis.
The 24-year-old man was waiting with friends in a line of about 100 people outside the Hash Lounge in Birmingham's Five Points neighborhood when he heard and felt gunfire.
Authorities identified the dead as Anitra Holloman, 21, Taj Booker, 27, Carlos McCain, 27, and Roderick Lynn Patterson Jr., 26. AL.com reported.
“It was like a series of Black Cat firecrackers going off, but this sound was a million times louder. It was reverberating off the building,” Eslami said.
Eslami tried to run but felt his left leg go numb and collapsed to the street, blood gushing from the bullet wound.
“I turned around and saw bodies lying on the sidewalk. The air was filled with smoke, gun smoke and it was lit by streetlights. It was eerie… People had their shoes off and were running. Wallets, keys, phones were everywhere,” Eslami recalled.
Police say the gunmen, who are on the run and have a $100,000 bounty on their arrest, fired at least 100 rounds into the busy nightlife district before fleeing in a car, but only aimed at one target.
The attack may have been the work of a hired hitman, and police suspect at least one of the guns used by the gunman was fitted with an illegal “Glock switch” that allows it to fire on full automatic.
Eslami's doctor told him the bullet missed a major artery by just millimeters.
At the time, Eslami was afraid we would bleed too much and collapse, so he spotted a passerby hiding behind a car and begged for help.
“I said, 'I've been hit! I've been hit!' I was hoping he'd come over and put pressure on me, but he just looked at me,” Eslami said. “It was a situation where each person was just looking out for their own interests.”
Eslami said a “puddle of blood” spilled from his leg onto the sidewalk before paramedics rushed him to a nearby hospital.
“When parents came, they saw people being told, 'We're sorry, but your son or daughter has died.' People were fainting in the hallways.”
Eslami, who friends have nicknamed him “Forrest Gump,” is recovering at home after suffering only small cuts to his genitals and a bullet hole in his buttocks.
“I can joke about it, but that's because I'm lucky. Some people didn't leave the sidewalk.”
