\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
-
The British government's plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party.
-
Australia's prime minister said Tuesday a French construction worker who confronted a man who stabbed six people to death in a Sydney shopping mall is welcome to stay in the country as long as he likes.
-
The world installed 117 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2023, a 50 per cent increase from the year before, making it the best year for new wind projects on record, according to a new report by the industry's trade association.
-
After its last closure in 2021, it has now reopened for guided tours of the air raid shelter and the bunker. The complex now includes a multimedia exhibition about Rome during World War II, air raid systems for civilians, and the series of 51 Allied bombings that pummeled the city between July 1943 and May 1944.
-
The creation of sexually explicit deepfake content is likely to become a criminal offense in England and Wales as concern grows over the use of artificial intelligence to exploit and harass women.
-
A fire raged through one of Copenhagen's oldest buildings Tuesday, causing the collapse of the iconic spire of the 17th-century Old Stock Exchange as passersby rushed to help emergency services save priceless paintings and other valuables.
-
A teenager has been accused of wounding a Christian bishop and priest during a church service in a second high-profile knife attack to rock Sydney in recent days, leaving communities on edge, leaders calling for calm and a besieged church urging against retaliation.
-
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday to pressure Russia to end its "insane campaign" in Ukraine, the latest in a parade of European leaders and senior officials to make such an appeal.
-
A couple who owned a Colorado funeral home where authorities last year discovered 190 decaying bodies were indicted on federal charges that they misspent nearly US$900,000 in pandemic relief funds on vacations, cosmetic surgery, jewelry and other personal expenses, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
-
Following the Iranian missile and drone strikes against Israel over the weekend, Canada should take the threat of Iran and potential escalation of the conflict seriously, one global affairs analyst says.
-
The ship crash that destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and left several people dead is now under federal criminal investigation, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
-
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let a Republican-backed law in Idaho that criminalizes gender-affirming care for transgender minors broadly take effect after a federal judge blocked it as unconstitutional.