Read Online Delivered from Evil: True Stories of Ordinary People Who Faced Monstrous Mass Killers and Survived by Ron Franscell - Free Book Online Page B

safety of the elevator’s tiny, enclosed vestibule.
    But then Barton appeared behind her. He chased her and pointed one of his guns at the back of her head.
    Brent jumped back in fear. The listless elevator continued its endless whirring, still seemingly a thousand miles away.
    Oh God, oh God …please don’t let me die!
    One shot cracked.
    And the elevator door opened.
    Brent crawled into the elevator and frantically stabbed at all the buttons. After what seemed like a deadly eternity, the doors began to close.
    Then the vestibule door opened and Barton leaped inside. Brent saw him between the doors as they slowly slid together, and the killer raised his gun to fire.
    The doors met before he pulled the trigger.
PRAYING FOR HELP
    The elevator rose slowly with Brent crouched on all fours inside. Blood dripped onto the floor and he could literally feel his life leaking away.
    The doors opened. Brent didn’t know where he was. He had pushed every button and couldn’t focus on the numbers that marked the floor. He rose to his unsteady feet and peeked around the corner at an empty hallway. He was relieved Barton hadn’t followed him, but he couldn’t dawdle. He was dying. If he could reach one of the nearby offices, he had a chance …to get help for the others …to call the police …to live. He stumbled to a nearby office and collapsed in the doorway, drained and bleeding profusely.
    â€œHelp! Help me!” he shouted. “I’ve been shot!”
    Several workers ran to help him while somebody called 911.
    â€œGet me out of the doorway,” he begged. “Hide me! He’s after me and if he sees me we’re all dead!”
    The police dispatcher assured the shaken caller that help was already on the way. Tragically, confused first responders believed all the distress calls were for the shootings at Momentum Securities. Although calls were coming from All-Tech’s building, too, dispatchers and commanders insisted they were wrong, and more than a half hour passed before it dawned on police that there had been two mass shootings in two different places.
    Somebody ran to the break room for a roll of paper towels to stanch the bleeding, while another began to pray over Brent, who was sinking fast. Blood pounded inside him as his heart worked to keep him alive. His skin felt seared, as if he had been pierced by a million white-hot needles, and his breathing grew shallow and painful.
    Three people pressed towels to Brent’s wounds, while someone stripped his bloody shirt away. Through the fog of pain and delirium, he saw horror splash across their faces as they saw what damage the bullets had done. It was a look that told him he was going to die.
    So he said what might have been a prayer—for Mark Barton. He tried to forgive his killer, who might have had a brain tumor, or forgot to take some vital medications, or was possessed by demons or—
for God’s sake, stop! Dying people think like this, and I don’t want to die!
    Still no paramedics. Fifteen minutes had elapsed.
    â€œWhere the heck are they?” he moaned weakly. Despite the compresses, blood continued to pool around him from eight different entrance and exit wounds.
    Another woman tending Brent’s wounds
asked whether he had any medical conditions
to worry about, and he said no.
“Are you allergic to anything?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Bullets.”
    â€œWe don’t know,” a woman told him.
    â€œThey’ve got to hurry or I’m not going to make it.”
    â€œWe know,” she said, stroking his forehead. “Calm down. You’re going to be just fine.”
    Mortally wounded, Brent couldn’t wait for help that might not be coming. This might be his last chance to talk to his mother and father again.
    â€œCould you please call my father?” he asked one of the women. He gave her the number, and she went back somewhere inside the