Pulse D.J.s Recall How Joyful Beats Gave Way to Massacre Gunfire

© Hilary Swift for The New York Times Ray Rivera is a D.J. who was working when the Pulse nightclub massacre unfolded.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hundreds of partyers were bringing their best to the dance floor as the reggaeton beats emanated from the D.J. booth to the main floor at Pulse, where the revelers swayed to the music, which has roots in Jamaican dance hall, Trinidadian soca and Panamanian Spanish reggae.

Around 2 a.m., with closing time approaching, D.J.s Simon2001 and Infinite — working the main floor and the patio — were looking to bring the crowd down from the heights reached earlier in the evening.

A third D.J. — Flawless, whose real name is Kraig Matthews — was working in a different room at the club that night. He did not want to be interviewed for this article because of the trauma he endured, he said.

Some people were smoking cigarettes on the patio. Others were saying goodbye as they prepared to leave, hugging and sipping the last remnants of their cocktails.

“Everything was normal,” Infinite, whose real name is Ray Rivera, said in an interview Friday. “It was a normal night. People were getting their last drinks because last call was at 2:25. Everyone was chilling.”

By 2:05, all of that had changed.

In the early hours last Sunday, as a gunman stormed through the door of the popular gay nightclub in a city considered the “Theme Park Capital of the World,” the disc jockeys’ lives were flipped upside down.

As Mr. Rivera played traditional reggae tunes on the patio, Simon2001, whose real name is Simeon Alberto Roman Barria, was in another booth in the main dance room.

When the gunman, later identified as Omar Mateen, began his shooting spree, each D.J. cut the volume, trying to figure out what was going on. Mr. Rivera said he was only four feet from the club’s main exit on the patio, but he helped people get out before he fled.

Mr. Roman’s experience was different: He found himself cornered.

© Hilary Swift for The New York Times Simeon Roman, also a D.J., was working in the main room of Pulse, which was nearing closing time as the massacre began.

His D.J. booth was eight to 10 feet above the dance floor and only accessible by a ladder in a small room visible behind the bar. Behind the booth, in a loftlike area, was the manager’s office and a room used for storage.

“As soon as I heard the gunshots, I lowered the volume and ducked down,” Mr. Roman said during an interview at Mr. Rivera’s home.

After that, he said: “I crawled to hide behind an amplifier in the other room. I was there the entire three hours.”

Mr. Roman said he encountered the club’s lighting technician in the loft area; as they sought a haven, they were joined by a third man, who had been shot in the arm but managed to scramble up the ladder to relative safety.

Mr. Roman said the three huddled together, trying to get out texts and calls on a cellphone belonging to the injured man, who did not want to be named. Seconds after the injured man got up to the small storage room, five to six other people managed to reach the manager’s office and hide there.

Out on the patio, separated from the main floor in the club, partygoers poured out as they tried to escape.

“At first everybody on the patio just stood there for a second as the first rounds went off — then more rounds went off, then more,” Mr. Rivera said. “Then people were everywhere, running out, climbing over the patio fence, jumping over each other, just trying to get out.”

Mr. Rivera said he watched in horror as a brief gun battle ensued between the first police officers on the scene and the gunman, before the officers drew back to regroup, outgunned by Mr. Mateen’s semiautomatic rifle. “Within a minute, there was a swarm of cops everywhere,” he said.

Mr. Mateen emptied his magazine of ammunition, reloaded, emptied, loaded, emptied, loaded — over and over, Mr. Roman said.

“I heard him laugh,” said Mr. Roman, 30, of Kissimmee, who was born in Panama. “I heard him change the magazines and throw them down when he was done; it was so fast. He knew what he was doing. Then the light tech said to me, ‘This guy knows what he’s doing,’ and at that moment I knew my life was truly in danger.”

Mr. Roman described hearing hundreds of rounds of ammunition being fired.

“It never stopped,” he said.

Mr. Roman, who has two sons, tried to call his wife, and got through. But just as he did, Mr. Mateen discovered several people hiding in the room below where the three men were huddled, and opened fire on them.

Moans and cries for help could be heard as the relentless gunman fired again, Mr. Roman and Mr. Rivera said.

“The word was that if you weren’t dead, he would finish you off,” said Mr. Rivera, 42, a father of five and a grandfather of three.

As Mr. Roman hid inside, Mr. Rivera was shuttled blocks away by the police, where he was questioned and asked to fill out witness forms. He was not done until 7 a.m.

For Mr. Roman, as 5 a.m. approached, things finally changed.

He said a SWAT unit raced into the club, shooting Mr. Mateen and going room to room, checking the club. Initially, the police called up to the D.J. booth area, where Mr. Roman hid, thinking it was clear. He and the others had to announce themselves.

As they came down the ladder, the first thing Mr. Roman recalls seeing was pools of blood everywhere. He recalled it looking like a “Halloween horror” scene, the colorful overhead lights of the club still spinning onto the floor where dozens lay dead.

“I’m trying to walk through with dead bodies everywhere — bulging eyes, contorted bodies,” he said. “There was more people on the ground than where you could walk and where there weren’t bodies, there was thick blood.”

Mr. Rivera said he has awakened each morning since then to thoughts of the carnage.

Mr. Roman wonders if there was anything that could have been done differently.

“What could I have done better that day?” he said. “But in the end — it’s out of our hands. It’s out of our hands. It replays in my head, though.”

Both men’s D.J. equipment is still in the club, part of the crime scene. Mr. Roman was allowed to retrieve his car from the Pulse parking lot on Wednesday. Mr. Rivera got his on Friday.

The two have day jobs, but they have taken time off to try to absorb what happened.

They want to get back to D.J. work but at the same time are reluctant.

“We have a custom with our music, and it’s going to take us a bit to get back into the mood,” Mr. Roman said.