Son sent heartbreaking messages to his mother during Orlando massacre
Mina Justice was asleep when she received the first text from her son, Eddie Justice, who was in the club when Omar Mateen opened fire, leaving 50 dead and more than 50 wounded.
This is the conversation she had by text with her 30-year-old son.
“Mommy I love you,” the first message said. It was 2:06am.
“In club they shooting.”
Mina tried calling her son. No answer. Alarmed and half awake, she tapped out a response: “U ok”
At 2:07am, he wrote: “Trapp in bathroom.”
Mina asked what club, and he responded: “Pulse. Downtown. Call police.”
Then at 2:08am: “I’m gonna die.”
Now wide awake, Justice dialed 911.
She sent a flurry of texts over the next few 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.
Mina said he was a homebody who liked to eat, work out, and make everyone laugh. He was 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 Eddie 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 2:39am, Eddie responded:
“Call them mommy Now.”
He wrote that he was in the bathroom.
“He’s coming I’m gonna die.”
Mina asked her son if anyone was hurt and which bathroom he was in.
“Lots. Yes,” he responded at 2:42am.
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 2:49am, 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 2:50am: “He’s a terror.”
Then, a final text from her son a minute later: “Yes.”
Eddie’s body was later found amongst the dead.
