Survival stories emerge from San Bernardino shootings

KEVIN Ortiz had been married for just two weeks when he was forced to make a gut-wrenching call to his new wife.

TWENTY-FOUR year old Kevin Ortiz had been married for two weeks when he was forced to make a devastating call to his wife.

“Kevin said he had been shot three times and that he was in pain but he was all right,” Dyana Ortiz, 23 told the Los Angeles Times. “Then he said ‘I love you’ and I said ‘I love you.’”

The environmental inspector was one of nearly 700 people employed by the Inland Regional Centre where a mass shooting occurred on Wednesday.

Another victim, health inspector Julie Swann-Paez, was due to receive an employee of the year award at the annual Christmas party when shooters burst in and opened fire on the revellers, the LA Times reports.

She was hit but managed to send a chilling group text message to loved ones: “Love you guys. Was shot.” Attached was a photo of her face as she lay on the floor.

“I thought she was dead,” her son Nick was quoted as saying. They finally located in hospital, where she underwent surgery for multiple gunshot wounds to her abdomen and leg, shattering her pelvis. From intensive care, Nick told his mother the prime suspect was Ms Swann-Paez’s own co-worker, since named as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28.

Kevin Ortiz had been shot twice in the leg and once in the shoulder but managed to call his new wife and father to let them know he was OK.

“Kevin called me immediately after he got shot and said, ‘I’ve been shot three times, Dad. I’m in pain. Don’t worry. There’s a policeman with me,’” his father Carlos said.

It’s one of several stories starting to emerge about the brutal attack in which a fellow employee, who was attending a holiday lunch, got up from the table and returned to allegedly open fire on his colleagues.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said 14 were killed and 17 were wounded in the attack which is the worst the US has seen since the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. That day, 26 children and adults were killed at Sandy Hook school in 2012.

The black SUV was involved in a police shootout. Picture: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong.

Following the rampage, 21 officers were involved in a gunbattle that left Farook, 28, and a woman thought to be his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, dead. Both are believed to be of Pakistani origin, according to reports, and had travelled overseas recently. Earlier in the day, they had dropped their six-month-old child off at a relative’s house, saying they were going to a doctor’s appointment.

Others have told how they hid inside offices in the complex. Jamile Navarro, a case manager at the service centre, called her mother and hid in a dark room.

“I said, ‘All right, I’ll be there, turn off the lights, don’t make a sound,”’ Olivia Navarro said. “And that was it.”

Luis Gutierrez told The Daily Beast how his wife Janet phoned him as she waited upstairs and he could hear gunfire down the line.

“She was looking out her window and saw the [man] dressed in all black with a mask on and a big gun,” he said. “I hear a commotion and I hear several shots before she put down the phone.”

Nurse Dorothy Vong text her husband around 11am to say a drill had stared as she filmed video showing tactical police running towards the building at full speed. Meanwhile neighbour

Mahir Rahman described how he grabbed his mother and hid under the bed as the shooting took place outside their home.

While none of the victims from the attack have yet been identified, information is starting to emerge about the suspect Syed Rizwan Farook. ABC News reports he used online dating sites and described himself as enjoying “target practice”, snowboarding and camping.

For more details on the San Bernardino shooting, read the main story here.