Early in the morning on June 12, 2016, Mina Justice was sleeping when her phone buzzed with a text from her son Eddie. The 30-year-old was inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where someone had started shooting at people who were out enjoying their Saturday night. The club was hosting its weekly Latin Night event. For the next 45 minutes, Eddie and his mother sent messages back and forth as the situation got worse.
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice worked as an accountant and lived in an apartment in downtown Orlando. His mother said he usually stayed home most nights and liked to exercise and make his friends laugh. That night, he decided to go to Pulse, which was a well-known LGBTQ nightclub in the area. A man named Omar Mateen, who was 29 years old, walked into the building just after 2:00 a.m. with a rifle and a handgun and started firing at people near the front door.
According to BBC, the first text Eddie sent to his mother came at 2:06 a.m. “Mommy I love you,” he typed on his phone. Right after that, he sent another message saying “In club they shooting.” Mina tried to call him, but he did not pick up. Eddie wrote back saying he was stuck in a bathroom and told her to call the police. She called 911 right away and kept texting her son to pass along information from the person on the emergency line.
What happened inside the bathroom
The messages from Eddie became more and more scared as time went on. At 2:39 a.m., he told his mother to get help there quickly. “He’s coming. I’m gonna die,” he wrote to her. Mina tried to tell him that the police were already there, but what Eddie sent back at 2:49 a.m. was even more frightening. “Hurry. He’s in the bathroom with us,” he typed.
His mother asked him if the shooter was right there in the bathroom. Eddie answered “Yes.” The last thing he wrote was “He’s a terror.” After that, no more messages came. Mina got in her car and drove to where the shooting happened.
She waited for hours at a hotel nearby where other families were gathering to get news about their loved ones. All day Sunday, she stayed hopeful and talked to reporters about her son. She even showed them the text messages they had sent to each other. But when Monday came, officials told her the terrible news that Eddie had died. In other true crime news, a Facebook Marketplace meetup near an elementary school turned violent when a buyer pulled out a gun.
The attack at Pulse nightclub took the lives of 49 people and hurt 53 others. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting that had ever happened in the United States. It is still the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in the country. Police killed Mateen after a standoff that lasted three hours. While the attack was happening, he made a phone call to 911 and said he supported the Islamic State. The FBI said it was a terrorist attack. Eddie Justice was one of the 49 people who lost their lives that night. His mother will always remember the last messages her son sent her from inside that bathroom. While in a separate incident, doctors were amazed when a woman survived 30 stab wounds after being found on a roadside.
Published: Oct 29, 2025 03:27 pm