2 dead, 9 missing after large explosion at RM Palmer factory in West Reading [Video]

Mar. 24—Travis Reiter woke up shortly after 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 15, just like he had countless times before.

He got in a short workout, took a shower and had a bit of breakfast. He said goodbye to his wife and three young children, hopped in his car and began the 45-minute drive from his home near Zieglerville in Montgomery County to his workplace in Wyomissing.

Other than dealing with a bit of sleet that made the roads a touch slick, it was a perfectly typical morning.

When he arrived at Berks Center for Digestive Health around 6:45 a.m., the 34-year-old administrator made his usual rounds. He chatted with staff members, he fiddled with a broken computer monitor mount and, after being unable to fix it, took a picture of it with his cellphone to send to the manufacturer.

Travis then headed to his office, ready to tackle another normal day. But what would soon unfold was far, far from normal.

By 8:30 a.m. Travis would find himself crumpled on the pavement of a parking lot at the medical center with a potentially fatal gunshot wound. He would find himself the victim of a workplace shooting.

Travis recently shared his story with the Reading Eagle in hopes that it will provide some comfort to others who have experienced similar traumas. And, he said, his experience should serve as a testament to the skill and dedication of the health care workers who, against all odds, saved his life.

Facing terror

As he sat in his office that morning, a staff member came in and told Travis that there was a situation in the medical center's back parking lot that needed his attention. So he went to check it out.

Outside, he saw two people standing in the lot. Thinking perhaps they were lost — a fairly common occurrence — he shouted to them from about 15 feet away, asking if they were OK.

A male voice responded, saying that he was just talking to his girlfriend.

"There wasn't any indication something was wrong," Travis said.

After heading back inside, Travis glanced back out the window to the parking lot. He noticed the pair were still there, standing near a white Cadillac. It popped into his head that the car matched the description of one driven by a man who had been stalking an employee at the medical center.

"I realized it might be more of a situation," Travis said.

So, he headed back outside. He told the pair that the center was short staffed and that he needed the woman, who worked there, to come inside and begin her shift.

He didn't receive a response.

Travis took a step forward to repeat his request. And that's when it happened.

The man pulled a handgun from his jacket, pointed it at the woman and fired. Standing just 5 yards away from the shooter, Travis' options of what to do in that terrifying moment were limited.

He could have run, or ducked and covered. He could have simply frozen.

But none of those choices would provide him much protection. And they certainly wouldn't do anything to help the woman who was now on the ground with wounds on her neck and face.

So Travis decided not to flee, but to fight. He charged the shooter, grabbing him by the biceps and wrestling with him in his best attempt to disarm him.

"I don't know jujitsu. I'm just a normal guy," Travis said.

The shooter was able to bend his arm, press the gun against Travis' shoulder and pull the trigger.

"It felt like getting hit with a jackhammer," Travis recalled, placing his hand over the spot where he was hit. "My ears were ringing and I fell to my knees."

Suddenly, Travis was vulnerable, unable to protect himself from a further attack from the assailant. He was terrified.

But instead of firing at Travis, or the woman, again, the shooter instead pointed his weapon at himself. Xavier Starks, as later identified by police, took his own life.

Starks, a former Reading High basketball player who graduated in 2018, was 23 years old. Police later said that the woman he shot was his ex-girlfriend.

The Reading Eagle is not identifying the woman because she was a victim of domestic abuse.

A race for life

Travis knew his injury was bad.

He pressed his hand to his chest and could feel blood bubbling out of the hole that the bullet had ripped through him. He could tell the wound was potentially fatal.

Travis managed to pull out his phone. He dialed 911 and put it on speaker to keep his hands free.

Within seconds, he said, a co-worker who had heard the gunshots ran outside. Seeing that Travis' injury was more severe than the woman's — the bullet that hit her had missed major arteries and her windpipe — she rushed to his side and took over applying pressure to his wound.

Other doctors, nurses and staff from the medical center soon followed, immediately jumping into lifesaving action. They were able to start an IV in an attempt to counteract the large amounts of blood Travis was rapidly losing.

Travis, who said he holds a strong faith in God, said he was at peace while he was sitting on the cold, wet ground. A nurse by trade who had spent time working in an emergency setting, he could tell that his co-workers were taking the right steps to keep him alive.

"I was just focusing on my breath," he said, saying each gasp became harder than the one before. "It feels like you've had the wind knocked out of you. You can't take a deep breath. I was telling them that my lungs were filling up with blood."

With his medical knowledge, Travis knew that speed was of the essence. He worried that any delay in getting him to a trauma center could mean he wouldn't make it.

"I knew I didn't have much time," he said.

A Reading EMS ambulance soon arrived and immediately scooped him up. It barreled toward Reading Hospital, with Travis overhearing the EMTs say that it would arrive in five to seven minutes.

"I thought to myself 'That's a long time, drive faster,' " Travis said.

Travis remained conscious for the entire ambulance trip, listening to the EMTs as they treated him. And he was alert when they reached Reading Hospital's trauma bay and emergency doctors and nurses began their work.

"I heard them saying they couldn't get an IV started and they couldn't get a pulse, so I knew it was a lot of blood loss," he said. "But there was no screaming and yelling, it was just everybody doing their jobs. And that helped me keep my sense of peace."

Moments after he arrived in the trauma bay, Travis was rushed into surgery. His last memory is of an anesthesia mask being placed over his face.

"I took a deep breath and said a quick prayer," he said. "I said to myself 'You made it, you're good.' "

Absolute panic

Pier Reiter thought it was a joke at first, one made in poor taste.

It was around 8:45 a.m., and the Jefferson Lansdale Hospital nurse had just finished up with two patients in the post-anesthesia care unit. She saw her personal cellphone was ringing and picked it up.

The voice on the other end was a doctor from the medical center where her husband worked. He told her that there had been an active shooting at the center that morning. He told her that her husband, Travis, had been shot.

"I asked if he was alive and he said yes," Pier said. "I asked where he got shot and, at first, he didn't answer. So I asked again and he said in the chest."

A trained medical professional, Pier knew exactly what question to ask next. She asked which side of the chest the bullet hit.

It was the left, the side where the heart and aorta reside.

"At that point I screamed," Pier said. "I wasn't even crying. I was just screaming that I need to leave. I can't really remember much else."

Pier was able to get in touch with a family member who drove her to West Reading, a seemingly never-ending trip given her state of panic and terror.

"On the way I got a call telling me that they had to rush him in for lifesaving surgery," Pier said. "I was just thinking, 'He's in the OR and I didn't get to talk to him.' I thought I may never see him again."

Once Pier arrived at the hospital, she was quickly brought up to speed on her husband's condition. She praised the staff, saying the people there provided her frequent updates and — knowing she was a nurse — honest assessments.

Pier was given a large conference room to use as a home base, where she hunkered down with friends and family.

"The doctors were coming in saying he's still unstable," she said. "You try to hold onto your faith, but the realistic, medical side of me kept coming out."

Travis' surgery ended up being a success, but that didn't mean he was out of the woods. Still, just being able to see him and talk to him the following day was a miracle for Pier.

She said her husband was unable to talk because he had a breathing tube inserted in his throat, but he was able to write. He drew a nearly unrecognizable picture of a tuba — an inside joke between the couple from their dating days when the same image miraculously won them a game of Pictionary.

"At that exact moment, when he drew that stupid tuba, I knew he was there," Pier said. "He was going to make it."

The road to recovery

Travis knows he beat the odds, that his survival was a matter of the stars aligning and everything going just right. He knows that his injuries, what he went through, would typically end in death.

The human body holds 6 liters of blood. Travis lost 5.

A bullet fragment missed his aorta, the largest artery, by less than 5 millimeters. Shrapnel from the hollow point round lodged itself in his shoulder, lungs and the bones of his spine.

"I was thinking, 'These are the case studies that we see in college,' " Travis said. "You just look at the images and say 'How?' "

Travis credits those who cared for him for making sure that his life was not cut short that day.

"If there was any hesitation by anyone, I wouldn't have made it," he said. "The actions they took, that everyone took, kept me alive."

Not only did those actions keep Travis alive, but also set him up for a rather impressive recovery. He ended up spending just four days in intensive care, and only six total in the hospital.

He would be back many times after being released, however, as his recovery was filled with a seemingly endless string of follow-up appointments. But most of that is over now.

He finished up physical therapy on Monday and is expected to make a full cardiological and pulmonary recovery. He no longer has any medical restrictions on what he can do, and he went back to work a month ago.

The last remaining major physical issue he's dealing with from the shooting is an 80% rupture of his left eardrum caused by the blast of the gun going off beside his head.

Of course, physical injuries aren't the only ones Travis has had to pursue. He has to deal with the mental and emotional side of things.

"I took a while before I could process the event," he said. "There were flashbacks, terrible images of what happened that day were there. But I couldn't really process it all."

In the weeks and months that followed the shooting, Travis did begin dealing with the psychological trauma of what happened to him. Shortly after his release from the hospital he visited the parking lot where it took place, wanting to force himself to face the memories of what took place there.

For the most part, Travis said, his mind is doing well these days. He's able to talk about the shooting without it triggering him, without it causing him to panic.

But sometimes, he said, usually in unexpected moments, he does face bouts of anxiety. Luckily, they tend to be brief and manageable.

"It's hit or miss what impacts me, but that's just the nature of trauma," he said. "We're still in it, we're still recovering, we're still living this."

Along with his own mental recovery, Travis said he has also spent a lot of time over the past three months thinking about the pain felt by the other victims of the shooting.

He worries about the woman who was shot, concerned that she might feel guilt over the incident. Travis said she shouldn't, that what happened was in no way her fault.

Travis said he didn't know the victim — they don't work in the same office — and hasn't spoken to her since the shooting. He said he would like to meet her at some point but is trying to be sensitive about her own recovery efforts.

Travis also expressed compassion for the shooter's family, pointing out that Starks' parents lost a son that day. As a father himself, he can imagine the deep, all-encompassing pain that must be causing them.

A reluctant hero

Travis cringes when the word "hero" is uttered, pointed in his direction.

He's just an average guy, he says. One who enjoys the outdoors, who loves gardening, hunting and who cherishes getting the chance to take his kids outside and "get them muddy."

"I'm not a hero," he said. "I just stepped into a bad situation. The staff at the hospital are the heroes."

Others, including those staff members, are quick to remind Travis that there can be more than one hero in a situation like his. And his actions were, most certainly, heroic.

They weren't, however, unexpected.

"People ask me if I'm mad about what he did, that he put himself in danger," Pier said. "No. That's just Travis. I know who I married. He puts everyone else first."

As if his actions on Dec. 15 aren't enough proof of that, his wife shared another nugget that drives it home.

"This isn't even the first shooting he was involved with," she said.

About 13 years ago, when Travis was 21, he and a buddy were going to a bar in Norristown. As Travis pulled into a parking lot, two men began fighting and banging into the back of his vehicle.

Suddenly, one of the men pulled out a handgun and shot the other one.

Travis jumped out of the car, and after seeing the shooter fleeing, immediately went into action. He applied pressure to the victim's wound, keeping him from bleeding out, while shouting for someone to call 911.

The victim, likely in no small part because of Travis, survived.

"What are the odds?" Travis said, a disbelieving smile on his face.

The victim in that case, much like himself, required quite a bit of blood to survive. In Travis' case it was 23 units.

That's why he and his wife are encouraging members of the public to make donating blood a priority. They also are planning to take part in events for the survivors of traumas and are looking for any other way they can to use Travis' experience to help others.

"We got to experience a miracle," Travis said. "We want to do something with it. Our goal is to take what happened and help people."

That's the least they can do, the couple said, given how many people rallied to support them in the aftermath of the shooting. Like, for example, the people at their church who made meals for them for three months.

"The sense of community and sense of positivity we've seen come from this is something you can't imagine," Travis said. "We saw one of the worst things you can on that day. Every day since, we've seen the best of the community."