911 Calls Offer Harrowing Look Inside Pulse Shooting: 'He's Gonna Kill Us'

A 911 call comes in at 2:11 a.m, but the caller is inaudible. "Hello, this is 911, are you there?" the dispatcher asks, repeating the question several times before receiving a muffled reply. "This is 911, are you there? Can you talk to me? ... Can you talk to me and give me anything?"

Nearly a minute and a half later, a man begs for help. "We're at Pulse," he says. "There's a shooting -- a mass murder."

This phone call is just one of 600 that Orange County, Fla., dispatch received on June 12, after a lone gunman opened fire on Pulse nightclub in Orlando, killing 49. Fifty-three more were injured in the horrific attack on the gay bar, now the site of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Twenty calls were released to media outlets Wednesday, harrowing messages in which clubgoers -- confused and afraid -- plead for their lives.

One caller phoned at 2:08 a.m from a back room at the club, trapped. After he reported that an active shooter was still on the loose, the emergency operator on duty instructed him to remain hidden.

"Keep the phone with you," the operator said. "Stay where you are if you feel safe there, OK?"

"No," the man replied. "He's gonna kill us."

The recordings also included people calling on behalf of friends, relatives, or significant others inside Pulse.

"There's a shooting," said one caller at 2:17 a.m. "There's dead people everywhere. My brother is calling me right now, saying there is dead people everywhere and he is hiding in the stall. Hurry up! He's inside the club. There's shooting. They're in trouble. There's so many dead people there. Hurry up!"

One frustrated man reported that his girlfriend had phoned him repeatedly from inside the bathroom. Two and a half hours later, he wanted to know when help was coming for her.

"This is the seventh time I'm calling," he said. "My girlfriend is at Club Pulse, sitting in a bathroom. Four dead, two wounded, and they're about to die. Nothing is being done. If she calls me again, I'm a former Marine. I'm going to load up and head over there because obviously the police of Orlando can't do nothing."

The shooter would later be gunned down following a three-hour standoff with law enforcement.

These recordings represent just a few of the calls that will be made public following a court ruling Monday allowing their release. Over 100 additional correspondences are set to be published, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Personal information will be redacted from the messages, and calls from patrons killed in the tragedy will be omitted.