Survival of the Fittest

"I dove under a chair, the man whose chair I dove under died. I'm asking myself why am I still alive."


This is a statement that a woman gave that survived the shooting that happened in a hotel while a church service was going on. I read this statement and cannot believe why this lady does not know the reason why she is alive. In short words, she took the other's man hiding spot.

Since I've had training on what to do when you are under fire, I think I can come to a conclusion of what happened that day.

Keep in mind that all of this occurs within seconds, which are running out. As the gunman started to shoot, people obviously began to run and duck for their life. Given the normal seating arrangement when you are in a religious service, you don’t have a lot of room to move around at all depending on how many people are sitting on that row. Also, as the shots began to ring, some people just turned around or stayed at their seats confused as to what was going on, while others quickly realized what was going on and ran or took cover.

Now this lady had the option to duck under her own chair, but who knows what happened. Maybe somebody else had taken her spot underneath the seat, or she just dove. I think that by the time the man realized what was going on and tried to hide, he saw that he could not hide underneath his chair cause somebody was in there already. This whole time he could quite possibly be still standing up or at least trying to crouch, but not being able to be fully hidden, this cause him to be left wide open to the gunman, thus an easy target.

This is all hypothetical since there are numerous possibilities as to how this one incident happened. However, the main thing is that when a person hears something or feels in danger, the first thing to do is to find cover. And I think that the lady who made the statement just took the first hiding spot she could find. Unless you have a family or are in a battalion full of Marines, we do tend to think about our own survival when we are in danger.