COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) — It’s been nearly a week since five victims were killed at Club Q, an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs.
FOX31 continues our reporting on the victims and survivors, but we’re also hearing from friends of survivors too.
FOX31 has heard from Kara, a friend of Charlene, one of Club Q’s many survivors.
“Charlene is one of my best friends,” Kara said. “She got shot about 13 times, she was standing about 10 feet away from the gunman when it happened.”
That shooting happened late last Saturday night, at what was once considered a safe place.
“I posted on her Facebook wall and said ‘I’m going to start calling you Superman because not even a bullet can catch you,’” Kara said.
This comes as we get renewed perspective from those retraumatized.
“Healing is, again, a lifelong process and healing looks different for everyone,” Brandon Wolf said.
Wolf is a nationally recognized LGBTQ civil rights advocate and a survivor of the massacre at a gay nightclub, known as the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. That’s where in 2016, the second worst shooting in modern American history happened. 49 people died, but many survived.
Images from nearly a week ago in Colorado Springs could easily be replaced with the pictures of first responders at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub.
“We have a political climate right now that treats LGBTQ people like a doormat or worse,” Wolf said.
Wolf is the first survivor from Pulse to testify before congress.
“One of the things I shared with that congressional committee is that it feels like in America we’ve made a decision that rather than do everything we can to combat hatred, we’ve decided to embolden it, subsidize it, and hand it an assault rifle,” Wolf said.
He says the tragedies in the LGBTQ community are not new, but in an act of defiance, brings that community a renewed resilience.
“The sense that I get from people in that club, from people in that community is they know we are all we’ve got, and they’re willing to go to battle for each other, to defend and protect one another from harm,” Wolf said.
FOX31 has confirmed with Wolf that survivors from the Pulse nightclub shooting will be making their way to Colorado Springs next week to help support the families and loved ones of the victims and survivors.