Texas shooting witness describes 'massive trauma' as he helped victims

Joshua W. Barnwell speaks to "Good Morning America," on May 8, 2023. -- ABC News

(ALLEN, Texas) -- The moments after Saturday's shooting at an outdoor mall near Dallas, Texas, will never leave Joshua W. Barnwell's memory.

Barnwell, who rushed in to help those who were wounded, said he had to cut away shopping bags and purses from the injured, "because all they were doing was shopping with their families," he told Good Morning America on Monday.

A women who was conscious asked Barnwell, who has prior military experience, to help her daughter.

"This woman had massive trauma, five to six gunshot wounds," Barnwell said.

He went to the daughter to start chest compressions, he said.

"When I saw the massive amount of blood come out from her when I gave her chest compressions to her back," Barnwell said. "I knew she was gone."

Steven Spainhouer, a military veteran whose son works at the mall, arrived just after the shooting, he said. He immediately encountered wounded people, he said.

"I was on the phone and I started counting bodies," he told GMA on Monday.

He recounted the conversation he had with an emergency operator: "I said, 'I've got seven bodies, I need seven ambulances.' She said, 'I don't know if I have that many.' I said, 'How every many you can get.'"

Monday, May 8, 2023 at 9:13AM by ABC News Permalink