Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Was Hearing Bullets Fly Over My Head

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

A. J, Carolyn and Stacy are all in separate groups shopping at a Salt Lake City Mall a couple days before Valentine’s day. A lone gunman shoots A.J and his father in the parking lot before opening fire into the card shop where Carolyn, her daughter Kristen and Stacy are located. Lynne is a hostess on the Greek cruise ship Oceanos when the ship loses power in a storm. After abandoning ship with 45 others in a lifeboat, initial attempt at rescue by a larger vessel causes the boat to nearly break up.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I was hearing bullets flying over my head and that was really scary. Real people. I was looking around at all the cards and the pink ceiling and all the happy things around me and I'm spewing blood. Who faced death? We were rowing into nothingness, into nowhere.

We didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. And lived to tell how. I had all this rage immediately come up in me, and I said, you shot me, you son of a bitch. This is I Survived. It's February 2007 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Two days before Valentine's Day, a Salt Lake City mall is filled with shoppers. Sixteen-year-old AJ and his dad Jeff are shopping for Valentine's Day gifts. My dad, he had this huge plan to take my mom to this really nice hotel in the city and, you know, buying her presents.

He just was going all out on this. I mean, that's the type of guy he was. Their shopping done, AJ and Jeff headed toward the rooftop parking garage. We were going to walk up the ramp and go to our car that was probably 10 feet away, like two or three stalls away. Suddenly, this man pulled out of the corner and was standing right on the top of that ramp, blocking the exit. I saw him pull something out of his trench coat.

He was grabbing a shotgun, and he pulled the shotgun up and pointed it at us. I heard my dad kind of shout, oh no. There was this huge bang and snap. And I remember kind of blacking out. Carolyn and 15-year-old daughter Kirsten are shopping at the same mall. We planned on going to the card shop right after school and have it be like a mom-daughter fun evening. We were going to go out to dinner and just laugh and have a good time together. And we were really close. The card shop is not very big. It's just this cute little small shop.

There's about five, six people in there. And as we were just walking through the door, there was a loud pop noise, big bang. And I had no idea what it was. It sounded like a gunshot, but that seemed so unlikely. But I thought, we'll be safer in this card shop. It's painted pink and it's bright and cheery and just a fun, cute place. It felt really safe. Kirsten started picking up these funny little gum packets for her brother and sister. She was laughing hysterically and we heard another shot. Stacey was in the same card shop looking for a Valentine's Day card for his wife.

We all looked at each other when we heard the pops. We were concerned about what they really were because they were getting louder and louder, actually closer and closer. And the reflection from the lights in the store made it so it was hard for me to see out into the hall. And so I walked right next to the window to try to see out. And right at that point, I heard another loud blast and saw a bright flashing light.

And all of a sudden, my arm, my arm had glass shards stuck all in it. And I said, Kirsten, this is not funny. What's, what is happening here? The gunman who shot AJ and his father had entered the mall. Without realizing it, Carolyn had been shot at through the card shop window. People were just standing there. They weren't hiding. They weren't doing anything. We were all just out there in the open. It was a fishbowl. So I saw some kind of a display box about three feet high that I hid behind in a corner. And I'm 6'4", so it wasn't really, it was kind of stupid. There was this loud crashing noise behind me,

and I thought the ceiling was caving in on us. And I see somebody walk in, and I just looked over my right shoulder, and there was this boy, a kid, he was about, you know, I could tell he was a teenager, and he had a trench coat on, and he looked, he was probably three feet away from me, and just looked me straight in the face and lifted his shotgun. And at that point, I was just like, I'm gonna die. The next thing I remember was

my dad laying on the floor in front of me, and I was on the floor. And I thought my dad, I don't really even know why this. I thought my dad was pretending to be asleep, and that's why that he would be safe that way. But I knew that the gunman knew that I was still alive. So I ran down the ramp, and as I was starting to run down, I started to realize how there was this huge,

like, throbbing pain on the left side of my head, and it felt like someone had taken a hundred or a thousand matches and lit them and, like, shoved them into my brain. I started running down the ramp to the underground parking, and I saw a car there, and I remember kind of waving them down or trying to say, like, help me or stop. And I remember them, like, looking at me in, like, horror and, like, so scared.

And I remember them shaking their heads, like, no, and then they just drove off, like speeding off. When I saw that happen, that they left, I realized that I might die. When he walked in and looked at me, when I looked back at him, at first he was just this kid, you know, but there was nothing there. There's just these blank eyes.

Then I saw his guns. He just looked me straight in the eye and lifted his shotgun. And it was that moment of unbelief. I'm about to get shot. The gun was about three feet away from me. He just looked at me and shot. He'd shot me in my right arm to my lung. I heard the man next to me say,

don't shoot, we all just want to go home. I figured, well, I've got to do something. I just can't lay here and get shot. The only thing I could think to do was talk to him, so I got to do something. I just can't lay here and get shot. The only thing I could think to do was talk to him. So I tried to talk him out of it. I said, you know, look, we all have families, and all we want to do is go home.

The glazed look that he had kind of disappeared for a minute, and I saw some normalcy in his expression. Then he kind of shook that look off, and he had the glazed, unfeeling look in his eyes, and he shot me. I started to run through the underground parking just to find someone if they were down there or find a car that I could hide in, a truck, anything.

And as I was running, I realized that my foot started to hurt too. Some of the shotgun pellets hit my foot. I heard this loud bang or pop again, and I just remember collapsing between two cars. AJ was hearing the gunman shooting inside the mall. I thought thought I am

gonna die and I was trying to like sneak or slide under one of the cars to hide myself but they were so small so low to the ground that I knew I wouldn't be able to fit and at that point I realized he really is gonna find me and I really am going to die. Inside the mall, Carolyn had been shot in the arm. I was laying on my face and I looked up and I was looking around at all the cards and the pink ceiling and all the happy things around me and I'm spewing blood. I'm losing so much blood.

It's coming out my nose. It's coming out my mouth. He was using a shotgun, so it just blasted the whole back of my arm off and shot into my lung. So I couldn't breathe. And I remember looking around and thinking, I'm going to die on the floor of Charlie Square today. And feeling like this is so strange. Stacy had also been shot. They looked down and my coat was smoking. I had all this rage immediately come up in me.

And I said, you shot me, you son of a bitch. And if I had been able to grab him, I would have. But my want to live got the best of me, so I kind of fell down and kind of tried to play dead. As I decided to fall down and play dead, I was shot again in the shoulder, in the left shoulder. I was laying there on the ground, and I was trying to look dead, but I was trying to look at him too.

I was trying to figure dead, but I was trying to look at him too. I was trying to figure out where he was. There was a lady right next to me that had been shot, and she was expelling some blood. And it was kind of a metallic red in color, and I thought it was her brains at first. I really did, and I was just freaked out. The gunman walked out of the store. I assume he thought we were all dead and he left the store.

He walked out and I thought he was done with us and so I was all relieved and I thought, oh man, I've made it. Badly injured, Carolyn saw her daughter Kirsten lying near the back wall of the shop. I looked over at Kirsten and she was laying there on her back and she was crying. It was the kind of cry that was, she was wincing. I could tell that she was really in a lot of pain. And naturally, my reaction was I need to get to her. I knew I was on my way out.

And I just wanted to tell her I loved her, and I wanted to be next to her. So I drug myself across the floor, but my arm didn't work. It was just like this sock attached to my body. So I pulled myself across the floor with my left arm and really bleeding badly. And I got right, just about right next to her. And my face and her face were probably a foot away from each other. And I was just about to ask her, try to find out what's wrong.

And then I saw him through the corner of my eye walking back in and reloading. And I thought, this is it. I've had it. He's going to make sure we're all dead. Cults are everywhere. They don't just live in the walls of NXIVM and Scientology. We'll see you next time. Your host of Was I in a Cult? Join us each week as we take you through a heroic roller coaster of someone's journey in and out of a cult. With a little levity thrown in because humor is healing and cults are funny. Listen to and follow Was I in a Cult at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Which for Tyler is at Rite Aid. On tape. A teenage gunman is on a shooting rampage inside a Salt Lake City shopping mall. He shoots 16-year-old AJ and his father Jeff in the mall parking garage. Thinking the shooter is still in the parking garage, AJ hides between two cars. I was so frightened and so scared. A car drove right in front of where I was hiding. And I stood up like a flash so quickly,

and I just threw open the passenger door and jumped into the car, and I landed on some girl's lap. I told them that there's a man shooting outside and that we needed to get out of here. The driver called 911 and drove AJ out of the parking garage. Then I tried to fill the back of my head and it was so numb I couldn't even feel it all I could feel was blood. I really thought that half of my head had been shot off. I was starting to go through shock and I kept thinking and saying, where's my dad? And I could just feel the

tears like running down my face and all I could think about was, I'm not there anymore, but I don't know where my dad is. And I kept saying, where's my dad? Where's my dad? And they didn't respond to it. Inside the mall, Stacy, Carolyn, and her daughter lie injured on the floor. I thought I was going to die. He came back in and was reloading and I thought this is like some cosmic joke. Here I made it through this barrage of shooting and then he's going to come back in and finish this all off.

I felt this pressure in my back and he was, it was hard. It was pushing down into my back really hard and it was the muzzle of the gun and then he shot again into my back and and then he put he put the shotgun on the side of my daughter's head. He just put her right there and shot the back of her head off. I didn't get a chance to say anything to her, so it was obvious to me she was gone. I just said, I love you, Kirsten.

Kirsten's dead. She's dead, and I'm about dead. And I was having a hard time keeping my head up. Kristen's dead, she's dead, and I'm about dead. And I was having a hard time keeping my head up. And when we put it down, there was so much blood on the floor. It was just this thick puddle of blood that kept accumulating because there was four bodies together right there.

And I'm looking at my daughter, and I'm looking into her head, and it was so surreal. And her sweet little face. Inches away, Stacy lay injured. The gunman crossed from Kirsten's body, stood over Stacy, and took aim. He shot everybody else except for the woman next to me in the head after he'd shot them to make sure that they were dead.

He was standing right over me, so I was afraid that he was going to just shoot me in the head. I was shot in the back, lower back. I immediately couldn't feel my legs, and I knew something was terribly wrong. He took off and ran up the hall. I laid there and I was petrified and I mean I didn't know where he was. I wanted to stay conscious because I thought if I lost consciousness I'd just die. Upstairs an off-duty police officer heard shots and called 911. Then Stacy heard the officer confront the shooter to draw fire. He said, shoot me, shoot me. I heard that. He was off-duty, but he had a sidearm with him. And so they were shooting it out

right above me. So I was hearing bullets flying over my head and that was really scary because I thought, you know, I've lasted throughout this, I'm gonna get hit by a stray bullet or something. The seriously injured AJ was driven out of the parking garage by his rescuers. Bunch of policemen pulled out of their cars and started running inside.

The women that were around me started to yell at the policeman, saying, we need to get him to a hospital. And I can vividly remember one of the cops looking at us and saying that we have to go inside and shoot the gunman. I heard a lot of shooting and realized that the police had come finally and thinking, it's too late for us. I heard this final pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, like that, and I knew

they had gotten him. The star was silent. I could tell there was nobody alive. There was no way. No, I was surrounded by death. I could tell there was nobody alive. There was no way. No, I was surrounded by death. Then I heard, okay, it's safe. Everybody's safe. Everybody's safe.

I saw these boots walk in, and they were standing right by me. They were these shiny black police uniform boots, and he was counting the bodies, and he said, we're all dead. And I remember trying to get his attention, because I wasn't dead yet. And he left. I knew there was people dying all around me.

But my thoughts were focused on my family. My daughter that's at work, how's she going to get home? That she was going to come out of work at midnight and be standing there in the dark, and I wasn't there to pick her up, and she's not going to know that her mom and her sister are dead. And I was so fearful of that. I've always been an overprotective mom. My kids, I just always wanted to make sure they were safe. Stacy was lying inches away, paralyzed from the waist down. I thought, I'm never going to see my wife and family again.

My time with them has been just too short. I just, you know, it was just so stupid that I was going to die in that cart shop. I could feel myself getting weaker and really struggling to get any kind of breath in because the blood was just bubbling out of my lungs, thinking, what am I going to do? And then I felt somebody pushing into my arm, and it was this cute little 18-year-old girl

that was a surgery check that worked across the hall in another store. And when she walked in, she thought there was no way anybody here could be alive. And then she, as she was going to leave, she saw my blood spurting with my heartbeat because it hit an artery in my arm. So she realized my heart was beating and I remember just saying, ow.

And she said, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm here to help. Then the next thing I remember is waking up full of tubes in the hospital. AJ, Stacey, and Carolyn were all taken to the hospital. All three underwent life-saving surgery. When I woke up after surgery and I had tubes in my throat, I couldn't talk. And I had tubes in my throat. I couldn't talk. And I had tubes everywhere. And my daughter Kate was standing next to my bed when I opened my eyes.

And I just looked at her and she said, Kirsten, to have to tell her that her little sister had just been murdered. That was hard. It really hurts. That emptiness, it doesn't go away. Ever. Several shotgun pellets remain lodged in AJ's head. His injuries continue to affect his memory and vision. I had to relearn everything in my life.

It was a long process, and I'm still recovering from things. The gunman was three feet in front of my dad and four feet in front of me and he shot us point-blank with a pistol grip shotgun. You cannot hunt with a pistol grip shotgun. It's designed to kill people and there's no there's no other use for it. The shotgun pellets, they spray everywhere. I shouldn't be alive today. For how close he was, how could he not miss me? AJ's dad, Jeff Walker, died on the ramp of the parking garage. The way that they found his body, he was angled kind of like in a slant, like he was trying to protect me. Like he was

stepping in front of me to kind of shield that gunshot. The final shot to Stacy's back paralyzed him from the waist down. My life has completely changed. Well, it changed in an instant that night. It's a hard existence. I've been paying 24 hours a day. You know, we keep on thinking positive, and I need to make it as positive as possible, not only for myself, but for the people who didn't make it out of there. The gunman was 18-year-old Zulishman Talavich.

Underage and unlicensed, he illegally purchased two guns and ammunition from a pawn shop. He killed five people and injured four others before he was shot dead by police. I survived because my father protected me and it wasn't my time to go. I survived because those two sisters let me into their car and called the police.

I survived because I know that there's something in this life that I need to do and I need to accomplish. I survived for two reasons. One was that I refused to do and I need to accomplish. I survived for two reasons. One was that I refused to die, and the other one was my wife. She was a rock. She supported me all through the really tough times. And we're still going through tough times,

and we will be going through tough times. But we're together, and that's what's important. I survived because I'm a mom and I had kids who still needed me. I love my kids so much and the thought of me being away from them and them having to say goodbye to me, it just, it wasn't time. Movies on all your favorite devices all summer long. Chill out poolside with Mission Impossible and Transformers. Or stay cool inside watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Titanic, or The Wolf of Wall Street. No matter your vibe, download the Pluto TV app to spend summer doing what you love,

watching endless movies. Tell me that's not the deal of the summer. Summer of Cinema on Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never. It's August 1991 in Transkei Coast, South Africa. 32-year-old Lynn is a hostess on the Greek cruise ship Oceanos. The crew are readying for a weekend cruise around the South African coast.

That area of South Africa is called the Wild Coast, and there's a lot of ships that have sunk around that area. It's got major storms and major different weather patterns and so it was really stormy before we even left the dock. So we were definitely going out into stormy weather. We had plates flying from the tables. There were a lot that didn't go to dinner because they were seasick. I went to bed at about half past nine in the evening. Then all of a sudden there was a deathly quiet

and the lights went out. And I could feel the ship rolling, but there was just deathly silence. And then one of the magicians banged on my door and said, you've got to get out now. We've lost power. When a ship loses power at sea, it is referred to as dead in the water. Having no control in a storm is especially dangerous. And it was sort of eerie because it's so quiet, and yet the ship's moving, rolling from side to side, and it's dark.

No senior officer raised an alarm or issued instructions. Cruise director Lorraine Betts assembled the entertainment staff and took control. She mobilized all of us and told us what to do because there were no officers as such that were telling us what to do. She told us not to tell anybody that we're sinking. At this point, she didn't even know we were sinking. She told us just go and get everybody and say we're having a problem with the engines and that the power's got off and we need everybody in the main lounge. We locked the doors because we couldn't let any passengers go down because it was dark. Some people were actually in their evening

attire and so we opened the shop and started to take out jackets for them and give them some different jackets and we had people say could I have a blue one, not a red one? I mean, we felt like saying, no, the ship is sinking. It doesn't matter what color you wear. A crew member confirmed the lower decks were rapidly filling with water. By hoppers 11, Lorraine had been to the bridge and they'd realized that there was no ways that we could save the ship. With no one more senior issuing orders, Lorraine began procedures to abandon ship. Lynn and fellow entertainment staff led the women and children to the lifeboats. People are getting more worried.

People are nervous. We're having to split fathers from the mothers and kids. And so the tension is definitely mounting and it's windy and cold, and you can feel that the sea is rough, really rough. The chief engineer and the chief officer and the safety officer got off on the first lifeboat, so they were gone. The senior officers only allowed a handful of passengers to join them. With no officers helping, the lifeboats had to be launched by untrained entertainment staff.

Near midnight, Lynn was told to board a lifeboat to help row and care for passengers. Sitting there, you can see people start to get more and more uptight, and the tension is definitely mounting. And it was an open boat with iron bars across the top of it, and we hung suspended for about an hour, waiting to be lowered in the wind, howling, just waiting with the kids, just waiting to make sure that the other boats had cleared so that we could be lowered. And all of a sudden you just, it was just like released.

And you remember you're in a two or three story building almost, that's how high you are on one of the biggest ships like this. And we were just smacked down into the water. And that was when the frightening part really started becauseacked down into the water and that was when the frightening part really started because once we hit the water you've got no control. We've been smacked into the side of the Oceanus and we smacked once smacked twice and it swung back and I had Lorraine's granny with me she's 81 years old and this bollard hit this iron bar hit her in the head now i was starting to think this is

we're gonna die after smacking against the side of the ship once or twice more we managed to row ourselves away and we were just sitting in the trough of these waves going up and down up and down being bashed around with winds howling we didn't know where we were going it was dark it was about one o'clock in the morning i I felt responsible for them, but I felt like I was losing control. We couldn't even see over the top of the troughs of the waves, so we all just sank to the bottom of the boat and stayed like that. People were then being seasick, it was windy, it was cold, they were whimpering, and we were just trying to row. We were rowing into nothingness, into nowhere. We didn't know where we were going or what we were just trying to row. We were rowing into nothingness, into nowhere. We didn't know where we were going or what we were doing.

The Oceanos had issued a distress call just before midnight. Near dawn, several helicopters and ships came to our aid. At 4.30 in the morning, we saw the helicopters. So we thought, oh great, they're coming to rescue us. But the helicopters were going in a completely different direction. They were heading to the ship. We just sat there. We just were now exhausted, tired, sick, and just rolling around in the sea.

At about 5 o'clock in the morning, there was a big Norwegian cargo vessel. This huge, big ship loomed. So we thought, oh, great, we can try and be rescued by them. Then it got worse. Instead of getting better, it got worse because again, as you come against the side of this vessel, we were being smacked into the vessel and the iron bars at the top of our little wooden boat started getting flung off. The boat started to leak and we were going to start taking on water. The moms and kids were screaming and we

couldn't, there's no ways we could jump onto this tall big ship. There's no ways you could jump off or throw kids. So we started to scream at them to go away because we were now losing our boat and we were going to start taking on water. They did eventually move away and we moved ourselves away and then everybody sort of huddled back down. There was no stars, there was no moon, it was pitch dark because of the storm. And of course with the 20 foot waves, plus the wind, plus it being in the middle of the night, it was cold. People were freezing and also we hadn't had time to get really warm clothing. I had shorts on and a t-shirt. The moms were crying at this point, the kids were upset, everybody was really rattled and really,

now we thought we were gonna drown. While we could, we were trying to see if we could see anywhere. And instead of seeing anybody or anything or any helicopter or anybody coming to save us, we saw some sharks. The area is notorious for sharks in South Africa. That whole Transkei coast has got white sharks.

And so I knew if we went into the water, we'd really be in trouble. We were just sort of whimpering and cold and trying to just stay in the bottom of the boat rather than be tossed into the sea. At this point, I didn't feel like I was in control as much because I was so exhausted as well that I didn't know what to do, what reaction to have next. There were no rations, fresh water or emergency equipment in the lifeboat. With the storm still raging, another large ship pulled alongside. Now we were really panicking because we knew this was the third time we were going to start smacking into the side of a vessel. And when you look up, you're looking up a three to four tier building. And we were all looking up at the side and screaming at them to go away.

They were screaming down in Polish and we were screaming up at them in English and Afrikaans or any language we could think of. Nobody was making any sense. Greek, everything was being flung around and it was chaos. They managed to take fishing net and they managed to take ropes and they flung it over the side, trying to encourage us to climb up it.

We kept trailing them. They know, they're women, they're kids. There's an 81 year old grandmother. Eventually one of the sailors got a rope and swung himself into our lifeboat. By this time, we were taking in a lot of water, and we still didn't know how we could get everybody up. But they were brilliant.

They took their crane, the crane from the side of the ship, and they swung it over the side, and they attached a lobster netting to the end of the crane, and they swung it down into the boat. The lifeboat was still smashing against the hull and threatening to sink. The 45 survivors had to be winched up in the net, one at a time. So they would take one kid,

put the kid into the lobster netting, pull him up in the net onto the side of the ship, and of course the mother didn't want to let go. The mothers wanted to go with their kids and I wouldn't allow it and the kids of course are screaming and crying but it didn't matter at this point and eventually we just said please let them go we have to do this we're sinking and we were all still waiting and just being flung around all over the boat and then they put Lorraine's granny in this poor little 81 year old she was being flung around all over the boat. And then they put Lorraine's granny in. This poor little 81-year-old, she was like flung into this lobsternet

and yanked up onto the side of the ship. And in all that time, the boat is taking on water. It was a miracle we managed to get them up. Safe aboard the rescue vessel, the survivors could see the ocean nose sinking. I just watched it in slow motion going. I saw the last of the deck chairs sort of going into the water and then the end of the boat going under. The people that were rescued, the ordeal wasn't over for them

because half of them had left a family member on the ship, and we didn't know what was happening. For the next 24 hours, nobody knew who was rescued, who was alive, who was not alive. All the moms and the kids had no idea where dad was. After the lifeboats had left, over 200 people were still aboard the drastically listing Oceanos. Throughout the morning, they were airlifted to safety by helicopter. No lives were lost.

I survived because we had such a great team who all worked together on the Oceanos. And we all knew how to react in a crisis, but also we were very, very lucky.