The last thing a mother wants to receive in the middle of the night is a text from his son saying he was about to die. That’s the nightmare Mina Justice will remember for the rest of her life.
In what is now being called the worst shooting incident in American history, a gunman open fired at a gay nightclub in Florida called Pulse which left 50 dead and 53 wounded.
According to a New York Times report, the assault happened at 2AM. Equipped with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a handgun, Omar Mateen turned what was supposed to be a night of dancing into a murder scene.
“I saw bodies on the floor, people on the floor everywhere; it was a chaos, everybody trying to get out,” said Ray Rivera, a D.J. at the club, in the report. “I heard shots, so I lower the volume of the music to hear better because I wasn’t sure of what I just heard. I thought it was firecrackers, then I realised that someone is shooting at people in the club.”
Photo credit: WFTV
As the shooting unfolded, people soon grew aware of what was happening inside the club and began pouring out of the streets, while others attended to their wounded friends.
Unfortunately, some were trapped inside the club and were held hostage. One of which was Mina’s son Eddie.
“Mummy, I love you,” his first text read. “In club they shooting.”
The distraught mother then asked if his son was okay, asking which club he was in.
Eddie’s next replies were even more disturbing, pleading for her mother to call the police and tell them he was in the bathroom.
“He’s coming,” Eddie said. “I’m gonna die.”
In a WOOFL report, Mina said she was going through hell as she stood outside the club waiting to hear from her son.
“I think it’s all of them in the bathroom. I could hear a lot of people crying,” she told reporters.
The Pulse’s official Facebook page even posted as status update in the midst of the incident, telling everyone to “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”
At 5AM, a SWAT team finally arrived at the nightclub, using armoured vehicles and explosives to disorient and distract the shooter, which they eventually shot dead.
Although Omar Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State before he carried out the attack at Pulse, his father said that his son’s action was not driven by religious ideologies.
In a Huffington Post report, Mir Seddique said that his son got upset when he saw “two men kissing in downtown Miami a couple of months ago, and believes that was part of his son’s motive.”
Meanwhile, in a statement president Obama gave, he said: “In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another. We will not give in to fear or turn against each other. Instead, we will stand united as Americans to protect our people and defend our nation, and to take action against those who threaten us.”
“This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or a house of worship or a movie theatre or a nightclub,” he added.
Featured image by AP News
