A man who helped his wounded friend escape Sunday's deadly poolside shooting said the gunman sat at the pool silent for 45 minutes, staring at the group of friends, before he pulled out his gun and started to fire.
Mychael Gary, 28, said he had been relaxing at the pool with friends for hours.
When the first bullet whizzed by, he mistook it for a joke.
"Literally, we were just laughing and talking to each other. When the first shot let off, honestly, I thought it was a firecracker," Gary said. "I thought somebody was playing with us, just to be stupid. So we ducked."
Shooting victim Kion Gould, who was celebrating his birthday at pool Sunday, w/his son - a football scholarship student from Utah #nbc7 pic.twitter.com/OT3LAE9ihB
— WendyFry (@WendyFry_) May 3, 2017
What followed were six minutes of deadly gunfire that left one of his friends dead, several others injured and his roommate, Kion Gould, fighting for his life.
Gould, who was celebrating his birthday at the pool that day, is recovering in the hospital after losing a kidney, severe wounds to his small intestines and a shattered arm from blocking a bullet meant for his face.
"We play basketball every day. Every single day. And to see him not able to move, I think that was the most hurtful thing," Gary said.
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Mychael says his roommate, a 48-year-old retired Navy veteran, is someone everybody looks up to, particularly Gould's 18-old-son.
"I play around and call him my hero," he said. "You know, he's an older guy and he's still in better shape than us."
Mychael ended up being someone else's hero that day.
"As I was running out the gate, and getting ready to try to hide, all I heard was: 'Mychael, Mychael, please don't leave me!'"
It was his friend Tommy.
Mychael thought Tommy wasn't going to make it out of the pool area alive.
"When I looked back, blood is coming from his leg," Mychael said. "And I just ran back to him and just tried to get him out of harm's way."
He said he dragged Tommy over his shoulder and the two hobbled out.
At that moment, Mychael didn't know if the shooter was following them.
Today, he wishes he could ask the shooter why he wanted to kill them.
He said he believes his group was targeted because of their race.
"That's what I believe, but I don't think he cared who he hit within our group because there were innocent bystanders in those poeple that shouldn't have been there, laying there to die," he said.
Homicide investigators said they are continuing to investigate the deadly incident but have so far found no evidence the violence was racially motivated.
Chief Shelley Zimmerman said Monday the suspect was depressed over a break-up with a girlfriend and called the woman on the phone during the shooting, demanding that she listen in as he shot people.
"You know what, we can never speak to him. We don't get a chance to ask him. He made his problem everyone else's problem and now he doesn ‘t have the problem anymore and that’s the part that just kills me," Mychael responded.
