\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 mayor of a major city in southern Brazil on Tuesday pleaded with residents to comply with his water rationing decree, given that some four-fifths of the population is without running water, a week after major flooding that has left at least 90 people dead and more than 130 others missing.
-
A northern Idaho prosecutor won't bring hate crime charges against an 18-year-old accused of shouting a racist slur at members of the Utah women's basketball team during the NCAA Tournament.
-
The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former U.S. president Donald Trump has cancelled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.
-
A retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a murder charge in the death of a man last year at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.
-
The world just experienced its hottest April on record, extending an 11-month streak in which every month set a temperature record, the European Union's climate change monitoring service said on Wednesday.
-
Two young siblings died after being swept away by a rapidly flowing creek in Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains, authorities said.
-
A federal judge has ruled Arkansas cannot prevent two high school teachers from discussing critical race theory in the classroom, but stopped short of more broadly blocking the state from enforcing its ban on "indoctrination" in public schools.
-
An appeals court on Wednesday granted the Hong Kong government's request to ban a popular protest song, overturning an earlier ruling and deepening concerns over the erosion of freedoms in the once-freewheeling global financial hub.
-
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
-
As former U.S. president Donald Trump remains stuck in the courtroom listening to salacious details of an affair he denies, another spectacle is playing out in the background as his vice presidential tryouts get underway.
-
AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had initiated the worldwide withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine due to a 'surplus of available updated vaccines' since the pandemic.
-
Russian forces unleashed a nighttime barrage of more than 50 cruise missiles and explosive drones at Ukraine's power grid Wednesday, targeting a wide area in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a 'massive' attack on the day the country celebrates the defeat of Nazism in World War II.