Texas

Eyewitnesses Describe Dayton Shooting: ‘I Saw People in Line Getting Shot and Just Falling'

Dayton's shooting comes just hours after a 21-year-old killed 22 people and injured 24 more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas

Anthony Reynolds, who was outside the bar in Dayton, Ohio, where a mass shooting took place that took the lives of nine people, spoke to NBC News and described what he witnessed. 

"It was chaotic. A lot of people were shot. It was scary," he said.  "I just kind of ran and tried to yell to as many people as possible."

A man wearing body armor and armed with a rifle and high-capacity magazines opened fire on a line of people waiting to get inside a bar in downtown Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday morning, killing nine people and injuring 27 in less than a minute. 

Dayton's shooting came just hours after a 21-year-old killed 22 people and injured 24 more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. In all, 29 people were killed and 53 injured in the two shootings. 

The shooter opened fire outside Ned Peppers Bar in Dayton's Oregon District around 1 a.m local time, officials and witnesses said. Police patrolling the area shot and killed the suspect within a minute, police said in a press conference later Sunday morning.

Nikita Papillon, 23, was across the street at Newcom’s Tavern when the shooting started. She said she saw a girl she had talked to earlier lying outside Ned Peppers Bar.

“She had told me she liked my outfit and thought I was cute, and I told her I liked her outfit and I thought she was cute,” Papillon said. She herself had been to Ned Peppers the night before, describing it as the kind of place “where you don’t have to worry about someone shooting up the place.”

“People my age, we don’t think something like this is going to happen,” she said. “And when it happens, words can’t describe it.”

Tianycia Leonard, 28, was in the back, smoking, at Newcom’s. She heard “loud thumps” that she initially thought was people pounding on a dumpster.

“It was so noisy, but then you could tell it was gunshots and there was a lot of rounds,” Leonard said.

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