TAMPA, FL — A registered nurse at a Missouri hospital, Rachel Sims came home exhausted on Oct. 28 after working the night shift. She put her cell phone on silent, hoping to get a few undisturbed hours of sleep before her kids woke her up.
As a result, Sims never heard the frantic messages left on her cell phone from her 20-year-old daughter, Kila Ryker, who lives in Tampa. And she was oblivious to the mass shooting in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood that killed a 14-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man, and injured 16 people — including Kila Ryker.
Two feuding groups of teens and young adults got into a gunfight in the 1600 block of East Seventh Avenue at 2:47 a.m., shortly before the nightclubs and bars let out at 3 a.m., releasing a mass of revelers into the streets of Ybor City.
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It wasn’t until Sims’ boyfriend, Cleo, began knocking persistently on her door that she learned of the chaos in Ybor City. And realized that her terrified daughter had been gravely wounded in the mayhem.
Sims knew her daughter and a friend planned to go to Ybor City to participate in Halloween festivities that night. Her daughter’s call to Cleo confirmed her worst nightmare. Calling from the street where she lay with a gunshot wound to the leg, Ryker confirmed that she was among the shooting victims.
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Sims began making photo calls to locate her daughter. From the corner of her eye, she watched the news of the shooting on TV and videos posted by eyewitnesses on social media.
“It looked like all hell broke loose,” Sims told Patch. “You could see people running away, screaming, and others on the ground. I felt helpless being 1,000 miles away.”
She tried calling the Tampa police, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Tampa General Hospital, but there was no information on her daughter. Just then, a video clip on TV showed a girl sprawled in the street. Sims couldn’t see her face, but she was intimately familiar with the tattoo inked on her daughter’s leg.
“I’m screaming at this point,” Sims said. “I was hysterical. Then the phone rang and I grabbed it immediately. It was my daughter. She just kept crying and asking, ‘Why me, mommy?'”
When her daughter handed her phone to the emergency room doctor at Tampa General Hospital who needed permission to perform surgery on her daughter, Sims discovered how close her daughter had come to losing her life.
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Because it was the weekend before Halloween, many of the celebrants in Ybor that night were dressed in costume. Ryker’s friend, Emily Perez, 18, opted to dress as an angel in a white dress and halo.
Ryker ironically chose a costume from the film anthology, “The Purge,” in which once a year anyone caught on the streets is targeted for death as a means of population control. She wore a black dress and mask.
“Leave it to my daughter to be dressed as the damned spawn of Satan while her friend was dressed as an angel,” said Sims, now able to joke two weeks after the shooting.
Sims said she has always told her children to never leave a nightclub or bar without the person or group they’d arrived with.
Ryker took her mother’s message to heart.
Angel Helps Friends Wounded By Gunshots
At 2:47 a.m., the friends were walking toward Ryker’s car when they heard screaming and gunshots. Ryker said they hunched down and began to run. That’s when Perez felt pressure in her leg and fell. She touched her leg and saw blood on her hand. As she lay there in shock, another bullet struck her left buttock.
Obeying her mother’s instructions, Ryker turned around to help her friend when a bullet struck her left thigh, hitting the femoral artery.
Of all the 15 bystanders struck by stray bullets during the firefight, Ryker’s injuries were the most critical.
As a registered nurse, Sims knows it takes paramedics an average of eight minutes to arrive at a trauma scene, but it takes only five to seven minutes for a wound to the femoral artery to bleed out, killing the person.
That might have been her daughter’s fate were it not for another angel in Ybor City that night, Sims said.
Though he had no halo like Perez, the security guard at the Showbar Ybor emerged from the safety of the nightclub to come to Ryker’s aid as she lay in the street, a short distance away from the body of a 14-year-old boy killed in the shooting.
“He applied a tourniquet on Ryker’s thigh to stem the blood flow and then set up a barricade around her to protect her from further gunfire,” said Sims.
Although Ryker said those moments are hazy, she clearly recalls the man telling her his name was Brian and asking her name, holding her hand and reassuring her.
“I was going in and out of consciousness and I was crying because it hurt so bad,” Ryker said. “Then I started feeling cold and I just wanted to go to sleep. I was so tired, but Brian kept telling me to stay awake.”
As Sims took a red-eye flight from Missouri to Tampa, arriving at 6 a.m., Ryker underwent five hours of surgery. To repair the femoral artery, surgeons had to take arteries from her other leg and transplant them to the injured leg.
When the surgery was finished, Ryker had more than 100 stitches running up and down both legs from her ankles to her pelvis.
Perez was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she was soon released. Ryker was released from Tampa General Hospital on Nov. 6.
While her surgery scars are healing, Ryker believes she’ll carry the mental scars from that night indefinitely. She said she had nightmares about the shooting every night.
How To Help Shooting Victims Recover
Both of the young women have incurred hefty expenses from their hospital stays and having to take time off work. For those who would like to help, GoFundMe campaigns have been set up for each.
Click here to donate to Ryker’s GoFundMe and click here to donate to Perez’ GoFundme.
Sims blames the proliferation of firearms in America and a government that condones people carrying concealed weapons with the current gun violence.
“We’re never going to get rid of gun violence until they take away all the guns,” she said.
As for Ryker, she’s been going to Ybor City since she was 12 years old, and always considered it a safe place to shop, enjoy a cup of coffee with friends, see a movie, go out to eat and enjoy the city’s parades and festivals.
“It’s always been my comfort zone,” she said. “But I’m never going back to that evil place.”
Fallout in Ybor City
Many share Ryker’s feelings and, as a result, Ybor City business owners say they’ve experienced a marked decline in visitors since the shooting despite increased police presence.
To help reassure business owners, residents and visitors that Ybor City is safe and discuss ways to make the city safer, Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw will host a town hall meeting from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Centro Asturiano de Tampa, 1913 N. Nebraska Ave., Ybor City.
“Following the tragic incident on Oct. 29, that resulted in the loss of two young lives and many victims injured, the Tampa Police is seeking input from residents, business owners and other stakeholders throughout Ybor City to work towards community-focused solutions,” Bercaw said.
“The incident that occurred is not a reflection of the Ybor community, and, understandably, this community has concerns since then that we want to address,” said Bercaw. “Everyone has the right to feel safe and should feel safe in the places they visit, work and live. By hosting this town hall, we hope that together we can not only address their concerns, but work toward ensuring that the Historic Ybor City District remains a safe place for all.”
Tampa Police detectives are seeking assistance in identifying a number of people who may have been involved in the fatal Ybor City shooting. The following video has been shared showing people of interest.
“We’ve had a number of tips that have already come in from our community,which have greatly assisted detectives to get to this point,” said Bercaw. “Whether you believe the tip may be insignificant, it could be the information that we need. The information that’s submitted could be the additional closure that the victims and their families deserve, as their lives have changed forever.”
Anyone with information that could assist detectives is encouraged to submit it to the FBI portal. Those who wish to remain anonymous can contact Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay at 800-873-TIPS (8477) or online and be eligible for a reward up to $5,000.
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