Friends, family recall victims
ORLANDO — The people killed in the Pulse nightclub early Sunday included a Starbucks barista, a UPS man and a gay cruises promoter. One was a telemarketer, another a pharmacy tech. One worked at Universal’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a connection that prompted the author J.K. Rowling to tweet a photo of him in a Hogwarts school tie, with the message, “I can’t stop crying.”
On Monday they were remembered for a personal trademark, like a silly top hat, or a skill, like makeup, or a passion, like mom’s
tomato-cheese dip.
That was Eddie Justice, who woke his mother, Mina Justice, shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday with a text message that began: “Mommy I love you.” Then he wrote: “In club they shooting.”
About 30 minutes later, apparently hiding in a Pulse bathroom, he texted: “He’s coming. I’m gonna die.”
Among the other victims:
Luis Daniel WilsonLeon, 37, moved to Florida from Puerto Rico, according to his cousin, Thron Crowe, so he could live openly as a gay person.
Miguel Angel Honorato, 30, was married and had three children, according to his brother, Jose, who had posted this note on Facebook on Sunday: “Come home bro, I’m waiting for you.”
Stanley Almodovar III, 23, posted a Snapchat video of himself singing and laughing en route to Pulse on Saturday night. His mother, Rosalie Ramos, left a tomato-and-cheese dip waiting for him.
Ramos, 51, was at home early Sunday when her phone rang with news that Stanley was trapped inside the nightclub. She hurried to the scene and waited anxiously behind police cordons through the threehour standoff between police and the shooter, Omar Mateen. She said Almodovar’s friends told her he’d tried to shield other victims in the club’s bathroom before being shot to death.
Edward Sotomayor Jr. had a trademark that summed up his personality: a silly top hat he used to wear on cruises. Sotomayor, 34, worked for a company that arranged gay cruises.
David Sotomayor, a selfdescribed drag queen from Chicago, said the two discovered they were cousins after meeting at Orlando’s annual Gay Days festival a decade ago. “He was just always part of the fun,” David Sotomayor said.
Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22, who told his cousin Robert Guerrero he was gay about two years ago, worried about how the rest of his family would react when he told them at the beginning of this year. As it turned out, “they were very accepting,” said Robert Guerrero.
Kimberly “K.J.” Morris, 37, moved to Orlando a few months ago and had been hired at the Pulse club as a bouncer. “She was really excited to start the job,” an ex-girlfriend, Starr Shelton, said from her home in the Bay Area of northern California.
Luis Vielma, 22, worked at Universal Studios on one of the rides at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. It was a good match: “He just wanted to make people smile,” said a co-worker, Olga Glomba.
Peter Ommy was how everyone knew Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz; it seemed to sum up the 22-year-old’s exuberant, life-of-the party personality.
Amanda Alvear, 25, loved fashion and was infectiously enthusiastic, relatives told the Orlando Sentinel. “People got caught in her wake. Whatever she was doing, that’s what they were going to do and have fun doing it,” her brother Brian Alvear said.
Leroy Valentin Fernandez recently was hired as a leasing agent for an apartment complex, his friend, Jennifer Rodriguez, told The Associated Press. Fernandez, 25, recently had been dating an older man, a dancer known by the stage name Eman Valentino. That was Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35, who also died.