A powerful and emotional moment was caught on camera Thursday as an Orlando shooting survivor was reunited with the police officer who saved his life.
Eatonville Police Officer Omar Delgado paid a visit to Angel Colon’s hospital bed at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
The two men tearfully embraced, as Delgado told Colon he was “so glad” that Colon was alive.
“My name is Officer Omar Delgado. I’m one of the ones that helped you get out of harm’s way,” the officer can be heard saying in the video. “I need a big hug.”
It was the first time the two men had seen each other since that terrible night at Pulse Nightclub.
“I was so happy,” Colon, 26, said after the reunion. “I’ve been wanting to see the man that took me out of that horrible place.”
Colon was sure he’d be among the victims.
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He saw Omar Mateen executing people around him, firing bullets into people lying on the club floor to make sure they were dead.
Colon was sprawled among them with a shattered leg. He’d been shot three times, had fallen and was trampled by a stampede of people that crushed his leg.
The gunshots got louder as Mateen made his way toward him. He fired a shot into the woman next to him. That’s when Colon thought it was over.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m next, I’m dead,”‘ Colon recalled from his hospital bed.
Then for reasons he can’t explain the killer misfired – twice.
“He shoots toward my head, but it hits my hand. And then he shoots me again and it hits the side of my hip,” Colon said.
Colon credits his survival to three sources.
One was God. Next was Officer Delgado, who dragged him from the club while his body was sliced by broken glass and drenched not only by his own blood but that of others pooled on the crimson-stained floor.
Finally, he thanked the hospital crew.
“If it wasn’t for you guys,” Colon told the hospital staff, choking up, “I definitely would not be here.”
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Some of the hospital staff teared up too during a news conference. One doctor recalled wave after wave of victims arriving at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
“They weren’t being brought in by ambulances. There was no paramedics coming in and giving us a report and dropping them off. They were being dropped off in truckloads and in ambulance loads,” said Dr. Kathryn Bondani.
-With files from Alexander Panetta of the Canadian Press