LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Arkansas Times) — A Little Rock resident, Darius Killingsworth, 20, said that he, his friends and one of his brothers came to Power Ultra Lounge on Friday night to listen to music and have some fun. Security seemed typical, Killingsworth said: two men at the door in vests and security T-shirts, each with a metal detecting wand.
Killngsworth said the crowd seemed calm most of the night. He said he never saw any arguments or fights in the crowd, but added that in the silence between songs when people would call out their gang affiliation. “The music would stop playing and everybody would be yelling out gangs and where they’re from and stuff like that,” he said. “That’s one incident where it popped off.”
When the shooting started, Killingsworth was upstairs watching the concert, standing near a low wall that separated the VIP section from the rest of the club. Then came the shots. Then screaming. Killingworth said he hit the floor, waited a bit, then ran for the stairs. In the dark, he could see blinding white muzzle flashes — what he called “sparks” — as what he described as “people shooting and people shooting back in retaliation” opened up around him in the crowded club.
“All you could see was sparks,” he said. “It was near me. I couldn’t see when it was coming from, but that was my time to go.”
As Killingsworth ran, he was hit twice, once in the left bicep, and a bullet grazed across his lower left back. “It was unreal,” he said. “It was a shock. It happened so quick and out of nowhere. Too many shots. I seen a girl get hit. I don’t know where she was shot, but she was in front of me. She fell. People were pushing and shoving trying to get past me. I’m running, shot, and they’re trying to push past me.”
Down the stairs and out the front door, Killingsworth ran most of a block before turning back to see if he could find his friends and brother. “That’s when they started shooting again [inside the club],” he said. “You could hear windows breaking, people screaming. When I started walking back to the building, that’s when I saw that I was shot. My shirt was wet, and I looked down to see why it was wet and saw all the blood.”
As Killingsworth stood there in shock, looking at the blood coursing down his side, two female friends who had been at the concert happened by in a car. They loaded him into the back seat and rushed him to Arkansas Children’s Hospital. They may have saved his life. The slug is still in his arm, lying between the bicep and the bone. His mother was trying to make an appointment today with a doctor who could remove it in the next few days.
Asked how it was possible that no one at Power Ultra Lounge was killed, given the amount of lead flying around inside the crowded club during the shooting, Killingsworth attributes that to fate and a higher power.
“Someone was watching over us,” he said. “It wasn’t our time yet.”
Click here to read first-hand accounts from other shooting victims.