\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 North Korean delegation led by the cabinet minister for international trade is visiting Iran, the North's official media said on Wednesday in a rare public report of an exchange between the two countries believed to have secret military ties.
-
A Douglas C-54 Skymaster airplane crashed into the Tanana River near Fairbanks on Tuesday, Alaska State Troopers said.
-
Protesters chanted 'Blood on your hands' at Tennessee House Republicans on Tuesday after they passed a bill that would allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds, and bar parents and other teachers from knowing who was armed.
-
Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Tuesday that joining the NATO alliance a year ago has transformed his country into a 'front-line state,' given that it has doubled the military bloc's border with Russia.
-
Officials in Baltimore plan to open a deeper channel for commercial ships to enter and leave the city's port starting on Thursday — a significant step toward reopening the major maritime shipping hub that has remained closed to most traffic since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed last month.
-
What began last week when students at a New York Ivy League school refused to end their protest against Israel's war with Hamas had turned into a much larger movement by Tuesday as students across the U.S. set up encampments, occupied buildings and ignored demands to leave.
-
The head of Mexico's detective service acknowledged Tuesday that the country is "the champion" of fentanyl production, contradicting President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
-
Ukraine on Tuesday suspended consular services for military-age male citizens until May 18, criticizing Ukrainians abroad who it said expected to receive help from the state without helping it battle for survival in the war against Russia.
-
The U.K. prime minister said Tuesday the country is putting its defense industry on a 'war footing' by increasing defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by the end of the decade, and pledged to send arms worth $850 million to Ukraine.
-
Life-saving medication and equipment are dwindling or altogether absent as brutal gangs tighten their grip on Haiti's capital and beyond.
-
Police in the U.K. are searching for a group of suspects seen on video using a forklift to steal a cash machine from a bank.
-
Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said on Tuesday it had launched a drone attack against Israeli military bases north of the city of Acre, in its deepest strike into Israeli territory since the Gaza war began.