Tim Tebow visits friend shot in Orlando massacre

ORLANDO, Fla. - Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow visited his former high school football teammate who was wounded in the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando.

The Orlando Sentinel reports Rodney Sumter was a bartender at Pulse nightclub and was shot three times on June 12.

Tebow and Sumter played football at Ponte Vedra Beach Nease High School near Jacksonville. Sumter noted that Tebow has "always been an awesome person."

On his Instagram account, Sumter noted that his "high school quarterback left the Bahamas" to visit him at Orlando Regional Medical Center where he's been since the morning of the shooting.

Sumter was among 53 people wounded and 49 killed when Omar Mateen started shooting inside the club as it was closing. Mateen was later killed in a shootout with police.

Club patron Josh McGill said he helped rescue Sumter.

"I was about to run for it, to the safe zone," McGill said. "And I hear someone kind of like mumbling, 'Help! Help!'"

A few feet away, 27-year-old Rodney Sumter Jr. lay wounded and bleeding, shot in each arm and once in the back.

"I only saw the one bullet at first, and I was like, 'We need to stop the bleeding.' And he's like, 'Okay.' So I took my shirt off and I tied it around as tight as I could and then I saw his other arm had been shot. So I took his shirt off, tied it around that one," McGill recounted.

The two hobbled their way to police at the scene.

"So the police officer turned to me and said, 'Okay, this is what the deal is. You're going to lay down in the back of that cop car and he's going to lay on top of you, and I want you to bear hug him and try to keep all the pressure on him as you can.' So I did," McGill said. "And they were like 'Also, like keep him conscious.'"

McGill held Sumter all the way to the hospital.