Witnesses describe chaos as shooter opened fire in a Colorado grocery store
Ryan Borowski told CNN’s Erin Burnett he was at the store to buy a soda and bag of chips when he heard several loud bangs inside the store and began to run.
“We just all ran to the back of the store and out the back door and employees showed us the way,” said Borowski. “And we told the employees what was going on. So, everybody helped each other and we just ran to safety as quickly as we could.”
When asked if he could see where the shots were coming from, Borowski said, “I didn’t see a shooter, I just saw terrified faces running towards me and that’s when I turned and ran in the other direction.”
Borowski also said he never imagined being in a shooting situation in Boulder. “This feels like the safest spot in America, and I just nearly got killed for getting a soda and a bag of chips,” he said.
“I was like, that’s kind of weird. I didn’t know if it was like a gunshot or whatever, but it was probably three seconds before we heard another, just like ‘bang bang bang bang bang,’ and I immediately sprinted over to her and was like, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ and I pushed open the emergency door,” he said.
A SWAT team member runs toward the King Soopers grocery store where a gunman opened fire on Monday, March 22.
“I didn’t see anything; I could just hear … and I just ran — I just wanted to get out of there,” Hummel said. “There was so much going on in such a compact area.”
Hummel said as soon as he got out, he immediately called his parents and his friend and roommate Mason, who works at the store.
Hummel said his first priority was making sure Mason got out safe, and later Mason was hiding in a storage room with other customers.
“One of the biggest scary texts he sent, he just said, ‘I love you guys. Thank you for everything in case things go bad.’ That was a really hard text, especially me being in this situation,” Hummel said. “That was something I would never want to hear from any of my friends. It was horrifying. It was truly horrifying.”
Health care workers walk out of a King Sooper’s grocery store after a gunman opened fire in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday, March 22.
Outside of the store, a man named Ben, was inside his apartment when he heard a few shots.
“I didn’t think much of it because it was all muffled from in my apartment,” he told CNN affiliate KCNC.
He says he looked out his window and he saw 40 or more police officers show up from all the surrounding cities. He also told KCNC he saw 10 to 12 people being taken to a bus.
“They pulled out a guy who had no shirt on, no pants and his whole right side of his leg was bleeding,” he said.
CNN’s Steve Almasy, Paul P. Murphy and Melanie Whitley contributed to this report.
