\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
-
At least eight worshippers were killed and 16 others injured early Wednesday morning after a man attacked a mosque with a locally made explosive in northern Nigeria's Kano state, resulting in a fire outbreak, the police said.
-
German lawmakers on Thursday lifted the immunity from prosecution of one of the far-right Alternative for Germany party's top candidates in the upcoming European Parliament election as he faces an investigation.
-
With prosecutors' hush money case against Donald Trump barreling toward its end, their star witness will be back in the hot seat Thursday as defence lawyers try to chip away at Michael Cohen's crucial testimony implicating the former president.
-
A judge decided Wednesday that a Southern California college professor will stand trial for involuntary manslaughter and battery in the death of a Jewish counter-protester during demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas war last year.
-
Indonesian authorities on Thursday raised the alert level for Mount Ibu, a volcano in North Maluku province, to the highest level following a series of eruptions since last week.
-
A lawyer for U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez blamed the politician's wife Wednesday for his legal problems, telling a jury at the start of a corruption trial that the Democrat wasn't aware his spouse had taken gifts from a trio of businessmen and didn't know about cash and gold bars hidden in a closet at their New Jersey home.
-
Forty-two people have been rescued while another three are missing after a boat believed to have been carrying migrants sent out a distress call while sailing in the Mediterranean south of the Greek island of Crete, the Greek coast guard said Thursday.
-
A second teen pleaded guilty on Wednesday in the death of a 20-year-old driver who was hit in the head by a rock that crashed through her windshield in suburban Denver last year.
-
Ukrainian units locked in street battles with the Kremlin’s forces in a key northeastern Ukraine town have halted the Russian advance, military officials in Kyiv claimed Thursday, though a senior Moscow official said the frontline push had enough resources to keep going.
-
The husband of adult film actress Stormy Daniels said on Tuesday that there’s a 'good chance' the couple will leave the country if former U.S. president Donald Trump is acquitted in his Manhattan criminal trial.
-
The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
-
A man with a long record of dangerous driving told investigators he smoked marijuana oil and took prescription drugs hours before he sideswiped a bus, killing eight Mexican farmworkers and injuring dozens more, according to an arrest report unsealed Wednesday.