San Bernardino mass shooting survivor: ‘I thought I was going to die in there’
Jena Nyende stood up from her seat inside the coffee shop at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino to grab tissues for a client who became emotional during a morning meeting.
As she walked back to the table, a resounding “boom” shook the room. Then came white smoke.
“I thought it was a fire,” said Nyende, a living-support worker whose company has contracted with the center to work with patients. “I’m thinking, ‘Whoa! Something exploded.’”
Nyende turned to her patient to get her to run outside. As she made her way to a door that led to the hallway and a room where a holiday party was taking place, a woman in a red jacket bolted into the coffee shop.
Terrified, she slammed the door. The woman, an Inland Region Center employee, according to Nyende, ran behind a counter along with other people.
Nyende started for another door, but then another center worker “came flying in” and closed it. He grabbed one of the tables and blocked the entrance. Another man in the room offered to help.
“Both doorways were filled with smoke,” Nyende recalled. “I thought I was going to die in there.”
She looked to one of the windows in the room, and decided she might have to shatter it to get out. The woman in the red jacket beat her to it, grabbing a chair and slamming it against the window. The chair just bounced back, Nyende said.
“People were crying, ‘Call the police! Call the police!’” she said.
Nyende grabbed her phone and dialed 911 to tell police that she thought a massive fire had broken inside the building.
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“It’s gunshots! Tell them it’s gunshots!” Nyende’s supervisor told her.
The woman in the red jacket already knew. She saw what happened inside the room where the holiday party was held. The shooters were covered up, she told Nyende, and had made their way into the conference room.
The police already knew, and were on their way, she said.
About 10 minutes later, Nyende said, officers came into the room to escort them to a nearby golf course. As she stepped outside with others evacuated from the coffee shop, she beheld a scene of chaos.
People were put on gurneys and taken to hospitals. Helicopters hovered overhead, airlifting shooting victims.
Two days after the shooting that killed 14 and injured 21, Nyende says she is still shaken up by the violence but thanks God she’s alive.
The client she had been trying to console had become emotional because she doesn’t like to be in large groups.
“I’m scared to go where a lot of people are,” Nyende said. “I am so sad.”
For breaking California news, follow @sarahparvini.
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