\r\nTo celebrate her graduation, Akyra, her parents and her 4-year-old sister travelled to Orlando for a family vacation.
\r\nOn Saturday, Murray told her parents she wanted to party in downtown Orlando. They dropped her off at Pulse at 11:30 Saturday night.
\r\nAt about 2 a.m., Akyra Murray sent a text message to her mother, saying that she and her cousins wanted to be picked up. She said there had been a shooting. Moments later, the phone rang.
\r\n\"She was saying she was shot and she was screaming, saying she was losing a lot of blood,\" Natalie Murray said.
\r\nMurray said her daughter was hiding in a bathroom stall, cowering from the shooter, her arm bleeding for hours with no medical treatment. Akyra Murray told her mother to call police and send help. They never spoke again.
\r\n\"It was devastating,\" Natalie Murray said.
\r\n\r\n(Facebook Image)\r\n"/>
\r\n\r\n Vaquer, who met McCool when they were kindergartners in Brooklyn, New York, said her friend gave good advice, backed up by life experience.\r\n \"She\'s smart,\" Vaquer said. \"She\'ll put you right.\"
\r\n(Image: Facebook)"/>
\r\n (Facebook via AP)"/>
© 2024 All rights reserved.
More from today's international headlines
-
A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
-
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore warned Thursday of a 'very long road ahead' to recover from the loss of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge as the Biden administration approved US$60 million in immediate federal aid after the deadly collapse.
-
Russian President Vladimir Putin scoffed at the possibility of his country launching an attack on a NATO member, calling it "sheer nonsense," but warned that any Western air base hosting U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets that are slated for deployment in Ukraine would be a "legitimate target" for the Kremlin's forces.
-
A French high school student is being sued by the government for falsely accusing her former principal of assaulting her after he made her remove her headscarf on school premises, the country's prime minister said Wednesday.
-
Pope Francis looked well as he washed and kissed the feet of 12 women prisoners on Thursday at a traditional ritual on the first of four event-filled days leading to Easter for the 87-year-old pontiff.
-
Human trafficking-fuelled fraud is exploding in Southeast Asia with organized crime rings raking in close to US$3 trillion in illicit revenue annually, the head of Interpol has said in comments that reveal the huge profits being earned by cartels.
-
It's become Italy's other "leaning tower." And now, after mounting concern that the Torre Garisenda in Bologna might be on the verge of collapse, a plan has been hatched to save it using the same equipment that shored up the Tower of Pisa.
-
A court ordered the eviction Wednesday of MyPillow from a suburban Minneapolis warehouse that it formerly used.
-
A robotic dog named Roscoe is being thanked by state police in Massachusetts for helping avert a tragedy involving a person barricaded in a home.
-
Marilyn Lands, who campaigned on abortion rights in deeply conservative Alabama, won a special election to the Alabama Legislature, in a victory that Democrats say illustrates voter backlash to extreme reproductive restrictions imposed by Republicans.
-
Here's what to know about the cargo ship Dali that crashed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse and leaving six bridge construction workers presumed dead.
-
King Charles III gave public remarks for Maundy Thursday, addressing the importance of acts of friendship, following his and Catherine, Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses.