One tragic conversation with a victim of the Orlando shooting was between Mina Justice and her son. She was asleep when she got her first text from her son, Eddie Justice. He was in the gay nightclub, where Omar Mateen was pulling a gun in a spree that killed 49 and wounded more than 50.
Here is the conversation between them:
"Mommy I love you," was his first appeal, at 2:06 a.m.
"In club they shooting."
Mina tried to call him, but did not get a reply. She began to get afraid.
"U ok"
He wrote at 2 a.m.: "Trapp in bathroom."
What was the club called, she asked. He answered: "Pulse. Downtown. Call police."
Then he wrote at 2:08: "I'm gonna die."
Mina Justice contacted 911, and as the next few minutes raced by, there were a series of quick texts that she sent:
"I'm calling them now.
U still in there
Answer our damn phone
Call them
Call me."
She was asked to stay on the line by a 911 operator.
Mina Justice was frantic with worry.
At 2:39 a.m., he replied:
"Call them mommy
Now."
He wrote that he was in the bathroom.
"He's coming
I'm gonna die."
Was he hurt? Was the man killing? Which bathroom was he in, she asked.
"Lots. Yes," he responded at 2:42 a.m.
She sent several more messages. Was he with the police?
"Text me please," she wrote.
"No," he said after four minutes. "Still here in bathroom. He has us. They need to come get us."
She told him at 2:49 a.m. that the cops were there. She asked him 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?"
He wrote at 2:50 a.m.: "He's a terror."
One minute later he wrote his final text: "Yes."
That was the last she heard about him, after which she left with a dozen family and friends to a hotel to wait for more news.
She revealed later that Eddie, an accountant, loved to be at home in a condo in downtown Orlando, eat a lot and work out. He had a lovely sense of humor. Mina Justice explained about him: "Lives in a sky house, like the Jeffersons. He lives rich."
She said she went through hell as she waited for some news from him. She later recalled to WOTL that she could hear all the people in the woman's bathroom.
'I think it's all of them in the bathroom. I could hear a lot of people crying,' she
"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."
The bad feeling got frozen on Monday, when her beloved son, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, was shifted into the list of victims.
YouTube/Associated Press
