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Man who saved dad of 2 from Jax after Orlando nightclub shooting hopes for reunion

By Brittney Donovan
By Brittney Donovan

The man who acted as a human tourniquet for a Jacksonville native who was shot three times during the mass shooting at an Orlando LGBT nightclub is hoping the two will be reunited.

Josh McGill was running from Pulse nightclub when he saw a man who was shot once in each arm and once in the back.

McGill didn't know the man, who said his name was Rodney, but stopped to help.

“At first, I just saw a lot of blood," Joshua McGill said. "When I got to him, I noticed he was shot once on each arm. And another time on his shoulder.”

McGill took off his own shirt to make a tourniquet for the stranger, who was later identified as Rodney Sumter, a bartender from Jacksonville.

“I told him, ‘I’m here, I’ll be here to help you. I’ll do whatever I can,’” McGill said. “And I said, 'I need to stop the bleeding,' and he just was like, kind of out of it.”

He then held him in the back of a police cruiser on the way to the hospital when there wasn’t an available ambulance.

“The instructions they told me were pretty simple. I had to lay on my back in the backseat. They laid him on top of me, and I had to wrap my arms around him and put pressure on the gunshot wound on his back, and hold him on the way to the ER,” McGill said.

McGill kept in touch with Sumter's friend, and was relieved to learn his condition was stable.

McGill said in a Facebook live video that he is working to meet Sumter again.

Sumter's mom told Action News Jax Sumter underwent surgery for his wounds on Monday. He had shrapnel in his back and both arms needed reconstruction.

She said he's a father of twin girls who recently starting working at Pulse. Sumter played football at Jacksonville University and Fletcher High School.

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