June 14, 2016
West Catholic Preparatory High School/Facebook
Akyra Murray has been identified as one of the victims killed during the shooting at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday, June 12, 2016. Murray is seen here wearing her cap and gown from her graduation from West Catholic Preparatory High School on June, 3, 2016.
The Philadelphia student-athlete who was killed in the largest mass shooting in American history was the youngest victim of the attack.
Of the 49 people massacred at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and identified by the city, Akyra Murray was the youngest. A West Catholic High School student who graduated on June 3, she was 18 years old.
Murray was a basketball star and set to attend Mercyhurst College in Erie this fall.
The New York Daily News pointed out that Murray was the youngest victim in an article Tuesday. Her mother, Natalie Murray, told the newspaper her daughter called her while the terror was happening inside Pulse nightclub.
The Murrays were vacationing in Florida when the shooting occurred. Natalie Murray said she received a text from her daughter around 2 a.m. about the shooting after dropping her off at the club earlier that night.
Natalie and her husband, Albert Murray, rushed to the club to pick her up, and Natalie described the phone call she had with Akyra while in the car before hanging up to call police. Per the Daily News:
The young woman from Philadelphia spent her final moments hiding and crying for her parents in the besieged Pulse nightclub, while nursing a gunshot wound to her arm.
“All I could hear was my baby screaming,” Murray’s mother, Natalie Murray, said.
The grieving mother recalled her daughter’s final phone call while driving to the Orange County Coroner’s Office to claim Akyra’s body.
“It was devastating,” she said.
Murray attended the club with her friend Patience Carter, 20, who was injured in the shooting.
Carter, an intern with FOX29, was shot in the leg and is still recovering but was in stable condition as of Monday, according to the news station.
