ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A Rochester man who was one of 16 people shot at a house party in the city last weekend is mourning the loss of two friends killed in the shooting.

Sam Colson says the house on Pennsylvania Ave. was already packed by the time he arrived. Within 10 minutes of his arrival, dozens of gunshots were fired.

"Everything that happens in this world is unexpected," said Colson. "Nobody knows what’s going to happen."

Colson, a Rochester resident, was standing in the driveway of the home when the shooting began.  

"Everybody knew instantly," he said. "Everybody knows what shots sound like, so everybody just tried to get low, but it was a lot of people, so it's a lot of people running into each other. A lot of confusion."

Colson spoke via FaceTime from his room at Strong Memorial Hospital. He was shot once in the back. Doctors treated him for a bullet wound which shattered his spine. Bullet fragments are still lodged there.

"I knew I got hit," he said. "But I didn’t know the severity of it because my legs just went numb."

Colson was friends with the two young people killed in the shooting. He says met Jarvis Alexander in school, and ran track against him. He and Jaquayla Young became friends at Monroe Community College. Colson said he’d just spoken with Jarvis minutes before the mayhem.

"Right when I got there, that's when Jarvis just got there," he said. "So he was there for no longer than me. I'm glad I got to talk to him one last time before everything happened."

Colson thanks the people who stayed with him at the scene until an ambulance arrived. Despite being shot in the spine, he says he has feeling in both legs, but can only move one of them. He expected to be released from the hospital Wednesday.

He will carry permanent scars from that tragic night.

"It just saddens me because they took two angels," Colson said of Alexander and Young. "Two pure-hearted people who had nothing to do with this. They just wanted to have fun."