A Friday at the office has turned into an afternoon of terror in Virginia Beach

Inside, the 40-year-old shot indiscriminately at three-story victims, a muffler cushioning shots.

People rushed to nearby buildings, offices stacked against office doors and hid in closets. The sound of screams echoed in their ears. Some held hands silently or sent desperate text messages to their loved ones.

"Victims are people we've worked with and we know, they're our friends, it's really, really horrible," said James Wood, deputy mayor of Virginia Beach.

& # 39; You could hear it walking around & # 39;

Some witnesses testified that they were not sure that the loud noises they had noticed from a distance were indeed shots.

Zand Bakhtiari heard shouts on the parking lot from the office of the first floor of building 2. The boss of Bakhtiari called to warn that there was an armed man in the building.

"I mostly texted my loved ones and a few minutes later I heard rapid shots," he said.

Mike, an engineer, said he and his colleagues had heard a woman scream. He came from a corner of the second floor where the technical supervisors were, including two of his bosses: Katherine A. Nixon and Richard H. Nettleton. Both were killed.

"We all started shouting, and then we heard gunshots," said Mike, who would only give his name.

He locked himself in his office and hid under his desk.

"He was shooting fast, it was not a shot, but three, three shots," said Mike.

"You could hear him walking around," he says. "When the shot rang out, you knew that he was not there, but then he would come back."

Gunshots, screams and chaos

Megan Banton heard the shots, screaming and screaming as she was hiding in her boss's office with 20 of her colleagues.

"I have an 11-month-old baby at home and all I could think of was him and try to get him home," said Banton, a public service employee of the city.

Craddock's colleague, Ned Carlstrom, said he heard gunshots and people screaming that there was a gunman in the building. But that did not seem real; he and his colleagues thought it was an exercise.

Carlstrom said he passed near Craddock during the shooting as they were coming out of the building.

"We met a man with a gun in his hand, but the film looked so theatrical because of the long magazine and the suppressor covering it," Carlstrom said. "He took a look at me, but he never raised the gun on me to shoot me."

He later discovered that Craddock was the shooter.

"I thought he was playing the role of an active shooter for our exercise," Carlstrom said.

Officers are struggling

Around 4:08 pm, police were dispatched to the scene, said Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera.

Two Virginia Beach police detectives at the municipal compound police station heard calls on the scanner, immediately grabbed the bulletproof vests slung over their office chairs and walked about 300 meters from the scene. .

They arrived first, with two officers from the canine unit patrolling nearby, a police source told CNN.

For five to eight minutes, officers walked the many corridors and stairwells of the building over 40 years old. They feared that the gunman might be among those running out of the building.

Then they found the shooter on the second floor.

The officers exchanged fire with Craddock, killing him.

& # 39; They leave a void & # 39;

After the shooting, the police searched for survivors in rooms, closets and offices. They found victims scattered on the three floors of the building. Some employees had to step over the bodies of the murdered colleagues during their evacuation. One survivor is remembered walking in a blood stained stairwell.

The day after the shooting, representatives of the city stood in front of journalists to recite the names of the 12 victims and their titles. The tribute took almost three minutes.

Herbert "Bert" Snelling, a local entrepreneur, came to the town center to apply for a permit after his death. The other 11 victims were engineers, account clerks, administrative assistants and priority workers.

Tara Welch Gallagher, Mary Louise Gayle, Alexander Mikhail Gusev, Ryan Keith Cox, Joshua O. Hardy and Michelle "Missy" Langer of Virginia Beach were killed.

Residents of Chesapeake, Laquita C. Brown and Robert "Bobby" Williams, a 41-year veteran of the utility service, also died in the shooting.

Christopher Kelly Rapp, who recently moved to Virginia Beach, worked as an engineer in the public works department for 11 months.

"They leave a void that we will never be able to fill," said Dave Hansen, director of the City of Virginia Beach.

Tears and prayers

Over the weekend, people attended prayers and vigils in Virginia Beach to remember the victims. Some held hands and prayed on the parking lot of a movie theater in the morning rain.

Community members left flowers and other tributes next to the yellow ribbon of the crime scene that was spread around the building. A man arrived with 12 American flags and placed them in the ground.

Mike and Vanda Snyder, members of the nearby United Methodist Church, stood silently and watched the building from afar. After paying tribute to the couple, the couple brought fries and cookies to police officers who were still working day and night.

"We can not do anything, you just feel helpless," said Vanda Snyder, a retired nurse who was working in an emergency room at the nearby hospital to deliver babies. "You want to do something, you can not do anything."