\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
-
Thousands of protesters gathered Thursday in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over his government's decision to hand over control of border villages to Armenia's long-time rival Azerbaijan.
-
A Boeing 737-300 plane carrying 85 people caught fire and skidded off a runway at Senegal's main airport, near the capital of Dakar. Ten people were injured in the crash, including the pilot, the country's transport minister said Thursday.
-
India said Thursday that Canada has informed it about the arrest of three Indian men who have been charged with the murder of a Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia last year, but insisted that no relevant information or specific evidence about Delhi's involvement has been shared by the Canadian authorities till date.
-
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, was selected by the Florida GOP as an at-large delegate for Florida at the Republican National Convention, according to a list of delegates obtained by CNN.
-
A Canadian man 'of Jewish Israeli descent' has been shot dead in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in a suspected criminal case, a security source said, while a previously unknown militant group said it carried out the attack in reaction to the war in Gaza.
-
Argentina's biggest trade unions mounted one of their fiercest challenges to the libertarian government of President Javier Milei, staging a mass general strike on Thursday that led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights and halted key bus, rail and subway lines.
-
Russia on Thursday wrapped itself in patriotic pageantry for Victory Day, a celebration of its defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War that Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned into a pillar of his nearly quarter-century in power and a justification of his military action in Ukraine.
-
Yemen's Houthi rebels on Thursday claimed responsibility for two missile attacks in the Gulf of Aden on two Panama-flagged container ships that caused no damage. Meanwhile, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader again threatened that Tehran could build a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue atomic armaments.
-
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
-
Armenia's prime minister visited Moscow and held talks Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid spiralling tensions between the estranged allies.
-
A wave of dangerous storms has begun washing over parts of the U.S. South a day after severe weather with damaging tornadoes and large hail killed at least three people in the region.
-
Police used pepper spray to clear a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested dozens of demonstrators on Wednesday just as city officials were set to appear before hostile lawmakers in Congress to account for their handling of the two-week-old protest.