\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
-
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that American military aid on its way to Ukraine will make a 'real difference' on the battlefield, as the top diplomat made an unannounced visit to reassure an ally facing a fierce new Russian offensive.
-
Hospitals in central Gaza have reported that 40 people were killed in two Israeli airstrikes overnight within a few hundred meters of each other.
-
Three men charged in the 2018 prison killing of notorious Boston gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger have reached plea deals with prosecutors, according to court papers filed Monday.
-
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has signed a new law regulating transgender people's use of bathrooms, locker rooms and dormitories in public education buildings, making Mississippi at least the 12th state to restrict transgender students from using facilities that align with their gender identity.
-
Georgian lawmakers on Tuesday approved a 'foreign influence' bill that sparked weeks of mass protests, with critics calling it a Russian-style threat to free speech and the country’s aspirations to join the European Union.
-
European Union nations endorsed sweeping reforms to the bloc’s failed asylum system on Tuesday as campaigning for Europe-wide elections next month gathers pace, with migration expected to be an important issue.
-
Donald Trump's fixer-turned-foe returned to the witness stand and could face a bruising round of questioning from the former president's lawyers as soon as Tuesday.
-
Armed assailants killed two French prison officers and seriously wounded three others in an attack on a convoy in Normandy on Tuesday and an inmate escaped, officials said.
-
A tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement in North Carolina Sunday, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting "free Palestine" amid a mix of boos and cheers.
-
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is planning to raise money for former U.S. president Donald Trump in the coming weeks, two sources tell the Associated Press.
-
The memoirs of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be released in November, nearly three years after her 16-year tenure leading one of Europe's biggest powers ended.
-
A billboard has collapsed and killed three people and injured 59 in India's financial capital, Mumbai, in thunderstorms and heavy rain, the Press Trust of India reported Monday.