In 911 calls, bystanders, neighbors and the mother of 9-year-old victim T’Yonna Major pleaded for help amid the chaos that followed the shooting spree that left three people dead and two injured last month in Pine Hills, recordings released Wednesday showed.
“My daughter’s been shot! My daughter’s been shot! Please help me,” pleaded Brandi Major, T’Yonna’s mother.
Major told dispatchers they were shot inside their home and didn’t know the shooter. She was sleeping before work while T’Yonna was watching TV in another room when a man later identified as Keith Moses entered the house through a backdoor and opened fire.
While she relayed that information to the dispatcher, authorities were informed of another shooting near the home, which took the life of Spectrum News reporter Dylan Lyons and injured cameraman Jesse Walden.
Major, who was wounded but survived her injuries, grew frustrated with dispatchers connecting her with first responders who kept asking if she was shot despite having repeatedly told them she had been.
“Ma’am, stop screaming,” a woman with Orange County Fire Rescue said.
Major replied, “You’re asking the same dumb question. My child is about to die!”
”Ma’am, we have paramedics on the way. They’re coming as fast as they can, I can’t make them come any faster,” Major was told. She was then instructed to place a towel over T’Yonna’s gunshot wound on her torso as deputies arrived.
”It’s OK, I’m here,” she told T’Yonna, before the line disconnected.
Authorities say 19-year-old Moses first killed 38-year-old Nathacha Augustin the morning of Feb. 22 shortly after he got in a car on Hialeah Street with her and a man who offered Moses a ride.
Moses allegedly returned to the neighborhood in the afternoon and shot the two Spectrum News journalists, who were at the scene to cover Augustin’s killing. Moses then went to the Majors’ house, killed T’Yonna and wounded Brandi Major, an arrest affidavit said.
First responders arrived to find several bystanders near the journalists’ Ford Escape performing chest compressions on Lyons, which a deputy took over. The incident report said he appeared to have been shot in the upper arm, while Walden was wounded in the thigh area.
According to an incident report released Wednesday, Lyons was pronounced dead at 5:38 p.m.
Witnesses told deputies that Walden was in the driver’s seat and Lyons in the passenger seat when the shooting occurred. One witness provided a photo of the gunman leaving the scene, the report said.
Several witnesses said they heard about six gunshots during the attack on the two journalists.
Moses currently faces three counts of second-degree murder and two of attempted first-degree murder, as well as charges of burglary, shooting at or within a car or dwelling, illegal possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed firearm and resisting an officer without violence.
He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail.
Prosecutors with the office of Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell are expected to seek first-degree murder indictments in the three killings but have not yet said if they will pursue the death penalty.