Reads the last text a mother received from her terrified son aftera heavily-armed gunman opened fire inside a Florida nightclub
Orlando (US): A mother has recounted the last text she received from her terrified son after a heavily-armed gunman opened fire inside a Florida nightclub, which left over fifty dead and another 53 injured.
Mina Justice said she was outside gay nightclub Pulse Orlando trying to contact her son Eddie who texted her when shooting happened. She said he asked her to call police before taking cover in a bathroom. His final text to her read, ‘He has us, and he’s in here with us’, according to a report by The Daily Mail.
50 people died in shooting at US gay club
‘Mommy I love you. In the club they shooting,’ a text from Eddie Justice to his mother read, says the Daily Mail report.
Terrified survivors — who moments before were laughing and dancing with friends — described how the gunman named by media as a US citizen of Afghan descent raked the club with bullets, prompting a police SWAT team to storm the venue.
Police said the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Mina Justice was outside the club trying to contact her 30-year-old son Eddie Justice, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police, added the Daily Mail report.
He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide and then wrote ‘he’s coming.’ ‘The next text said: “He has us, and he’s in here with us,”‘ Mina Justice said. ‘That was the last conversation.’ An estimated 320 people were inside the club at the time of the shooting.
Quoting law enforcement sources, CBS News named the shooter as Omar Mateen, who was born to Afghan parents in 1986 and lives in Port St Lucie, Florida.
Bodies fell like nine pins, blood all over
It was a Saturday night at the Pulse nightclub, which could mean only one thing: a raucous, high-spirited celebration that would not end until well after daybreak. Strobe lights were flashing and music blaring at the popular lounge, home to one of the hottest party scenes in Florida — and where 50 people were killed and 53 injured in a mass shooting.
Just a few days earlier, Orlando’s vibrant LGBT community had marked the annual Gay Days celebration, one of the biggest events anywhere in the US dedicated to gay pride. The partying was to go on at Pulse, a popular dance club and bar known for its drag shows.
Scores of people turned out for the show: A contest of dancing, lip-synching drag queens took the floor one by one, showing their best dance moves, sashaying in high heels, as patrons laughed, nursed their cocktails, tossed dollar bills onto the stage. Crowd of patrons thronged the area just off-stage, raised bottles of alcohols and drank shots, amid a crescendo of laughter.
Then, barely discernible under the cheers and the throbbing music, were the sounds of what one reveler said sounded like drumbeats punctuating the soundtrack.
Patron Christopher Hanson said at first he thought the loud, rhythmic sounds were part of the music “until you heard too many shots. It was like, bang, bang, bang, bang.”
At some point, it dawned on him that the “loud banging noises” were actually “gunshots going off,” Hanson said. “I didn’t see any of the actual shooters,” he told CNN.
“I just saw bodies going down and I was ordering a drink at the bar. I fell down. I crawled out. People were trying to escape out the back. “I just know that when I hit the ground, I was crawling and I hit my elbows and my knees. When I got across the street, there were people — blood everywhere.”(AFP)
