‘Run, it’s a mass shooting!’ Witnesses recount terror as gunman opens fire in Ohio

It was around 1 a.m. Sunday when a gunman opened fire in the historic Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio, killing 10 — including the shooter — and injuring 27 in under a minute.

The Oregon District is one of the city’s entertainment hubs, boasting shops, galleries, restaurants and bars. Assistant Police Chief Matt Carper described the area as safe, USA Today reported.

Witnesses, many of whom were out enjoying the district’s nightlife, describe the horrifying moments the gunman began shooting.

Anthony Reynolds was about to head home when he said he heard a single gunshot, then another, telling Today that it became “complete rapid fire for like one minute.”

“Once the gunshots started coming rapidly, you just saw the crowd started running west,” he told the news outlet. “We were just yelling at people telling them, ‘Run, it’s a mass shooter, run, it’s a mass shooter.’”

Reynolds described the shooter as being a white male in all black wearing a “face covering.”

Another witness, identified as Nikita, said a women she briefly spoke with inside a nightclub was a victim.

“We told each other that we liked each other’s outfits and thought each other were cute,” Nikita told WDIV. The next time Nikita saw her, “she was laying on the concrete dead outside the club.”

Nikita and her friend Tiffany told WDIV that tussles weren’t uncommon at the club, but that they knew this was different because of “the screams.”

Robert Woodruff said he was present the moment police began trying to stop the gunman.

“The direction I was running from a guy got shot in the head and fell in front of me,” Woodruff said, according to WHIO. “I ran the other way and bullets and people started dropping the other way. I started crawling the other way and dead people start falling that way. I thought I was about to die until the officer was standing over the top of me he started shooting at the guy.”

Woodruff described the shooter as having on a mask and “big earphones,” WHIO reported.

Graham Hunter, 24, had just arrived to the area with a group of friends when the shooting began.

“Everyone was panicking and running around,” Hunter said, according to CNN. “After the shooter was dead, everyone was just crying and stuff,” adding that there were “bodies all over the place.”

The shooter has been identified as Connor Betts, 24, of Bellbrook, Ohio, officials said.

This story was originally published August 4, 2019 at 12:56 PM.