Orlando: On the day of the terrific shooting during gay nightclub parade, Mina Justice, mother of Eddie Justice, trapped inside the club received a text and he told her that he was going to die.
Here is the onversation this mother had with her 30-year-old son:
“Mommy I love you,” the first message said. It was 2:06 a.m.
“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 a.m., 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.”
Her son replied, “Call them…”
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 a.m., 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 a.m.
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 a.m., 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 a.m.: “He’s a terror.”
Then, a final text from her son a minute later: “Yes.”
That was the last message that she received from her son. Her friends, family are awaiting news of their dear one trapped inside.
Responding on his missing son, she said, “His name has not come up yet and that’s scary. It’s just …” she paused and patted her heart. “It’s just, I got this feeling. I got a bad feeling,” she said.
In the worst mass shooting in US’ history, at least 50 people were killed and 53 others injured when a “lone wolf” gunman opened fire early on Sunday in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where a state of emergency has been declared.
