VIRGINIA BEACH
Christi Dewar spent part of Friday celebrating co-workers’ birthdays with ice cream sundaes.
They were a close-knit crew who had a good time with each other.
At 4 p.m., she and her colleagues in Virginia Beach’s public utilities call center noted it was “power hour” — one more hour to buckle down and get their work done before the weekend.
Minutes later, 12 people were gunned down by a person who worked across the hall from Dewar. Eleven of the victims were colleagues.
One of them was Ryan Keith Cox, who went by Keith, a longtime friend she says saved several lives, including hers.
Dewar and Cox started work on the same day in 2006. He would give her a hug anytime she needed one. He always had a kind word to say and drove her home from work when her son couldn’t. He had the heart of a servant.
“You knew from the start he would lay down his life for anybody,” said Dewar, who choked back tears throughout the interview. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
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It started with a “pop, pop, pop.”
Dewar thought the sound was a nail gun. Her building was undergoing renovations, after all. But three people ran into her office on the second floor saying, “Active shooter, active shooter. Get out of the building.”
The sound of gunshots were muffled because the gunman used a silencer. Dewar now believes that cost her and others precious minutes to escape or hide.
Dewar initially believed it was a safety drill, but her co-workers let her know it was for real.
“So we ran to the back door of our office, which is near the south stairwell, and one of the girls screamed, ‘It’s too late, it’s too late! Run the other way,'” Dewar said.
She and six of her colleagues ran the other direction. Cox told the group to stop and stand against the wall inside the break room. He looked out the door to keep watch for the gunman.
“If at all possible, I knew he was going to lead us to safety. We felt safe. He stayed calm. He didn’t have any anxious thought in his voice,” she said.
When the coast was clear, Cox told his group to rush into a nearby office and lock themselves in. Dewar pleaded with him to join them.
“I said, ‘Keith, come on,'” she said. “He said ‘I’ve got to see if anybody else needs help.’ He said. ‘Barricade the door. Do it now.’ “
The group pushed file cabinets against the door while Cox looked for others.
Not long after, the shooter approached the room. She said he fired four shots through the barricaded door. As Dewar and the others dropped to the ground, she fell against some boxes, making a loud crunching noise.
“I don’t know if he thought he hit somebody or what. But we could tell that he was away from the door,” she said. “Then the next shot we heard is I guess when he found Keith.”
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When the gunshots seemed farther away, Dewar called 911. The dispatcher asked for their location so police could find them. While she was on the phone, she could hear gunshots getting closer again, so she hung up.
One of the women in her group got text messages from a friend who worked on the third floor. That person said the shooter was up there. They tried to remain as quiet as possible.
“And then all of the sudden we heard, ‘Code blue, code blue! Police! Who is here? Is anybody here?’ ” she said. “We started screaming.”
Police told the group to unblock the door and an officer asked if anybody was injured. One of the women looked out the door and saw Cox laying about 10 feet away.
“Keith is down on the floor. Keith is down on the floor,” the woman screamed.
Dewar said her colleague wanted to leave, but police said it still wasn’t safe. They barricaded the door once again and waited. By the time police returned to get them, Cox’s body had been removed.
An officer grabbed Dewar by the hand and told her to stay calm and not look around.
“As we started to go through the floor, all I could see was just splintered wood, doors that were off their hinges just broken. It looked like a freaking war zone,” she said.
They exited through the south stairwell.
“All I could see was blood everywhere,” Dewar said. “And we got to one of the landings, and there was a woman lying there covered. We didn’t know who she was. They said ‘You have to step over her. Just step over over.’ “
“I was shaking so hard, I screamed ‘I can’t, I can’t.’ “
Someone told her not to look down, that she could make it out.
Eventually, she did.
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Dewar and the other survivors were taken to a nearby post office. She immediately knew some of her co-workers weren’t there. They wondered aloud whether Cox survived.
“So many people were just staring. All of us pretty much couldn’t believe it. It was just like, is this really happening? Did it really happen?” she said.
Police officers soon took the group to the courthouse to interview them.
It was about 9:30 p.m. before she was finally released. Her 25-year-old son, Chuck, picked her up. She had called him earlier to let him know she loved him, was proud of him and to have a happy life if he didn’t hear from her again.
“If it wasn’t for those police officers and the heroism of Ryan, my little 13-month-old grandbaby wouldn’t have had a grandma,” she said.
Dewar went to see Cox’s parents the next night. She wanted them to know their son saved lives, that he always gave her a hug when she was feeling down and that he insisted on making sure she arrived safely at her door. Sometimes she would tell him to drop her off a few blocks away, but Cox refused.
“What kind of gentleman do you think I am?” he would say. “I take my ladies up to their door and make sure they’re safe before I leave.”
Before she left, she asked Cox’s older brother Ervin for a favor.
“I said, ‘I know you’re not the teddy bear, but can I have a hug?’ And he said you certainly can. Just having him give me that hug just helped out so much last night.”
Dewar called her mother in Oklahoma to tell her about how Cox saved her. Her mom told her to take comfort in at least one thing.
“When I told her what Keith did, she said ‘God had a guardian angel walking the earth with Keith. Keith was your guardian angel, baby and don’t you ever forget.’ “
“And we never will.”