\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
-
Crucial witnesses took the stand in the second week of testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial, including a California lawyer who negotiated deals at the center of the case and a longtime adviser to the former president.
-
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
-
High waters flooded neighborhoods around Houston on Saturday following heavy rains that have already resulted in crews rescuing hundreds of people from homes, rooftops and roads engulfed in murky water.
-
Saing Chhoeun was locked out of his Charlotte, N.C., home on Monday as law enforcement with high-powered rifles descended into his yard and garage, using a car as a shield as they were met with a shower of gunfire from the direction of his neighbor's house.
-
An Israeli incursion in Rafah would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of Gazans at risk and be a huge blow to the aid operations of the entire enclave, the U.N. humanitarian office said on Friday, as the World Health Organization announced contingency plans for an incursion.
-
Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party's mayor of London, appeared Saturday to be romping to victory as results from the capital pour in.
-
Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was seized with worry about the potential political damage from a tape that showed Trump bragging about grabbing women sexually without their permission, longtime Trump adviser Hope Hicks testified Friday at his hush money trial.
-
Police ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to clear out of a tent encampment at New York University early Friday, a move that follows weeks of demonstrations and police confrontations at college campuses nationwide that have resulted in more than 2,300 arrests.
-
Just like the Olympic athletes, the cyberwarriors that will be crucial for the success of the Paris Games are deep into training for the big event.
-
Spain scrapped an annual bullfighting award on Friday, prompting a rebuke from conservatives over a backlash against a centuries-old tradition they see as an art form but which has run into growing concern for animal welfare.
-
A zebra that escaped from a trailer east of Seattle last weekend remained on the lam Friday, as authorities closed off trailheads at a nature area in hopes of keeping people away and easing her capture.
-
They're lounging, biting each other and generally making a ruckus in numbers not seen in more than a decade. And don't even think about stealing their anchovies.