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CARTHAGE — Helen Olive had just gone by a nursing station Sunday morning when she heard a gunshot.

"Oh, my God," she thought, "there ain't supposed to be a gun in here."

Olive, a resident at the Pinelake Health and Rehabilitation Center, ran to her room, got behind the bed, grabbed her phone and called 911.

"This is Pinelake," she said she told the operator. "I hear gunshots."

The dispatcher asked what room she was in and told her to stay there and that officers were on the way.

The chaos started about 10 a.m., when police say 45-year-old Robert Stewart walked into the nursing home at 801 Pinehurst Ave. and started shooting.

When the rampage stopped, eight people were dead and three were injured. Seven of the eight were nursing home residents; one was a nurse at the 159-bed facility.

Olive said she considered all eight to be her friends.

As soon as Olive got off the phone with the dispatcher, she said she crawled into the bathroom, got behind the shower curtain and closed the door.

"I was so scared," she said. "I thought I was going to have a heart attack."

Outside her room, Olive said she could hear more gunshots and people screaming.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, it's coming toward me,' " she said.

She could tell people were running up and down the hall, but it was difficult to hear what they were saying because her television was on in the other room.

But the gunshots were unmistakable.

"It was pap, pap," she said.

Olive's daughter, Carrie Hutchens, was in Sunday school when a deacon heard about the shooting at the nursing home. She headed for Pinelake and called her mother's cell phone. That's how they communicated throughout the day before they saw each other outside the nursing home later.

Hutchens said her mother was fortunate to get away so quickly.

"I feel sorry for the ones who were sitting in the wheelchairs and couldn't get away," Hutchens said.

Olive said she doesn't know why the gunman chose Pinelake or did what he did.

She said she thinks about the residents who were killed and their families, some of whom would visit her as well.

What the residents and staff went through Sunday is not something anyone expects will happen to them, Hutchens said.

"This is her home," Hutchens said. "She should feel safe there."