ORLANDO, Fla. — Channel 9 spoke with an Orlando shooting survivor who said all she wanted to do was dance.
“I wanted to go enjoy the night with the people I work with,” said Stephanie Kersten.
Kersten and her friends went to Pulse nightclub, and that's when the dancing turned into devastation.
“When I first heard it, you don't recognize it's gunshots. It' just a normal, ‘do, do, do.’ You think it's the bass in the music,” she said.
But the sounds were gunshots flying throughout the club.
Kersten and her friends ran, only to find themselves trapped.
“At that moment, we were stuck in the middle of the hallway and it felt like sardines squished in. There were so many of us,” she said.
Kersten said to escape from the physical, she turned to the spiritual.
“That's when I began to pray, and I just said, ‘Dear God, please help me to get out of here. I really want to get home to my four kids,’” she said.
As she was running down Orange Avenue, Kersten realized the horror of what was going on.
“This guy was like, ‘I can't make it. I can't make it,’ and I'm like, ‘Yes you can. Dear God, give him the strength you can make it,’” said Kersten.
Kersten still doesn't know if he did.
“I don't know how I was the lucky one. They say one in three made it out safe, and I'm one of them,” said Kersten.
The guilt of surviving has now turned into a mission of understanding the reason why she was chosen to live.
“I think for me, I'm here for a reason, and I think I was saved for a reason,” she said. “I can't change that. I was the one who made it out alive, but I can change what I do from it,” Kersten said.
You can hear more of Stephanie’s story on Central Florida Spotlight on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. on Channel 9.
Cox Media Group
