I am so sorry you and the other patrons had to go through this ordeal. You have my prayers for strength and peace. We are all here for you. God bless.
I have prayed for your healing and a prayer of thanks you are alive.
I was held at gunpoint by a killer. My wife and I were at the beach in Sarasota in 1998 and a white punk running from police shot at beachgoers. He then held off the many police officers by coming over toward us to choose one hostage. I told my wife to crawl under a parked car and stay there. Three younger guys and stood together and we made our plan if the gunman came near us. I was 42 and they were about 25 . We were resolutely going to take him down. I felt strangely calm but my wife was terrified under the car. She said from under the car “What do you see?” Is said “He’s waving the gun and coming toward us” “She said, Oh,God. What good will it do me if you die. I don’t want you to die.” I remember saying “ I’m not going to die and neither are you.”
The killer chose one man in his 70s and his wife almost fainted with terror. He slowly walked the man to the parking lot, grinning a triumphant grin I will never forget, with the gun held to the man’s head. By chance he went to the right side of the lane in the lot and we were on the left but only about 10 feet away at most.
The killer got into the man’s car and roared off, the cops allowing it, of course. I heard the nearest cop say “Our mistake was the decision to let him leave, now he’ll kill that man anyway.”
He much later released the hostage from a house he had invaded with two other people in it. Cops arrested him.
He was from Michigan (where my wife and I live) and committed some crimes while hiding in Sarasota. He murdered a woman in her 60s who had hired him to do chores as a kindness to him. He figured she must have a lot of money from her business at her house so she had his accomplice talk to her while he grinned (accomplice said) and shot her in the head through her bathroom window from outside. he dimwits were wrong-—her money was all in the bank, of course and only $20 was in cash at the house. She died for nothing.
After we got back we were hyper for a few hours, then exhausted, then mixed emotions the next day.
You will feel better at some point but don’t rush it. God will heal you.
May God bless you. Amen.