People from Las Vegas’s gay communities are mourning the atrocity in Orlando.
Customers at the Phoenix bar and lounge struggle to make sense of the worst mass killing in the U.S.
“Sadness, it’s tragedy, it’s horrible,” said Wade Abel, a customer.
“All these lives were lost in this senseless massacre,” said Abel’s husband, Eric McArdle.
The couple told 13 Action News they were horrified when they heard a gunman shot and killed 50 people and wounded at least 53 others at a gay bar in Orlando.
“When I learned about it this morning. I was absolutely devastated,” McArdle said, adding the same thing could happen in Las Vegas and not just in gay nightclubs like the Phoenix. “It could happen in the casinos. It could happen anywhere nobody is safe at this point this is terrorism.”
“The first thing I have to worry about is whether or not it’s going to happen here,” said Joshua Terris, a bartender. “People can just walk in anywhere with a gun and start shooting if they fell like it.”
Terris said the mass shooting is all his customers are talking about. “It’s the only thing on everyone’s mind,” Terris said.
McArdle and Abel don’t usually go out on a Sunday night, but they went this Sunday evening to make a statement: violence won’t make them change the way they live.
“I’m not scared of it because to be scared of it is to give into the terrorism,” Abel said.
“We as the gay community need to stand up and be heard again,” McArdle said.
