Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.
Coretta Cotton is the assistant director at UCF Victim’s Services. After the Pulse nightclub shooting, UCF Victim’s Services provided advocacy to victim’s families and survivors as well as relief efforts to the UCF community as well.
Advocates are on call for a week at a time. She happened to be on call on the day of the shooting. The director called her around 6AM. Coratta was going to church but the director asked her to be aware that there had been a shooting in Orlando. At that time the number of dead was reported to be eight.
Coretta was asked to report to Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC). When she got to ORMC, the hospital was in lock down. There was no one in the bays. Initially ORMC didn’t know what to do with her. She was asked to go to a big room where they were holding the families and survivors who were waiting to hear something. Everyone was being checked in.
People who were injured but well enough to text loved ones were being re-united with their families upstairs. At some point, Coretta began to work with an agent from the FBI to do death notifications. There were nine notifications that had to be done. These nine were at the hospital, while most of the others were still at Pulse.
So Coretta along with some advocates from the Orange County Sheriffs office, worked with the FBI to do death notifications. Even then the number kept rising. It was 8 then it was 20 something and then it finally reached 49. Everyone was frantic to learn what was going on with their loved one.
A separate area was set aside to meet with the families. The officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) actually delivered the news. Advocates were on hand mostly for support. After the first or second family got the news people realized it would not be good to go to this meeting. There were a couple of families that only spoke Spanish but the Sheriff’s advocate could speak Spanish.
She was probably at ORMC from 7am to about 3:30pm. There was no break. The gravity of the day didn’t hit until she drove home. That level of grief is something she hopes she never has to face again on that scale.