Orlando: Mina Justice was sound asleep when she received the first text from her son, Eddie Justice, who was in the gay nightclub when a gunman opened fire and slaughtered 50 and wounded more than 50 others.
Here is the conversation she had over text message with her 30-year-old son.
“Mommy I love you,” the first message said. It was 2.06 am.
“In club they shooting.” Mina Justice tried calling her 30-year-old son. No answer. Alarmed and half awake, she tapped out a response. “U ok”. At 2.07 am, he wrote: “Trapp in bathroom.”
Justice asked what club, and he responded: “Pulse. Downtown. Call police.”
Then at 2.08: “I’m gonna die.” Now wide awake, Justice dialed 911. She sent a flurry of texts over the next several minutes.
“I’m calling them now. U still in there. Answer our damn phone. Call them. Call me.” The 911 dispatcher wanted her to stay on the line. She wondered what kind of danger her son was in. He was normally a homebody who liked to eat and work out. He liked to make everyone laugh. He worked as an accountant and lived in a condo in downtown Orlando.
“Lives in a sky house, like the Jeffersons,” she would say. “He lives rich.” She knew he was gay and at a club — and all the complications that might entail. Fear surged through her as she waited for his next message. At 2.39 am, he responded, “Call them mommy Now.” He wrote that he was in the bathroom.
“He’s coming. I’m gonna die.” Justice asked her son if anyone was hurt and which bathroom he was in. “Lots. Yes,” he responded at 2.42 am. When he didn’t text back, she sent several more messages. Was he with police?
“Text me please,” she wrote. “No,” he wrote four minutes later. “Still here in bathroom. He has us. They need to come get us.” At 2.49 am, she told him the police were there and to let her know when he saw them. “Hurry,” he wrote. “He's in the bathroom with us.” She asked, “Is the man in the bathroom wit u?” At 2.50 am: “He’s a terror.” Then, a final text from her son a minute later: “Yes.”
Club owners took to social media at 2.30 am on Sunday
The frightening social media announcement came at about 2.30 am early Sunday on Pulse night club’s Facebook page. “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running,” it wrote.
A man armed with a handgun and an assault rifle was rampaging through the gay nightclub, located just south of downtown Orlando, in a shooting that police have since said killed 50.
Bar owners again took to social media to warn patrons as the chaos subsided that they would be posting updates as they get them. For all of its flaws, many quickly turn to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook for immediate updates during tragic situations, an expert said.
