To honor slain cousin, a Pulse survivor helps mass shooting survivors
Tiara Parker once clung to her cousin, who took her last breath in Pulse nightclub’s bathroom stall.
Now, cousin Akyra Monet Murray’s voice looms in her mind.
“‘You always did all that crying,’” Parker remembered Murray saying as they grew up. “‘Turn your pain into gain.’”
And she did.
Today, Parker is an advocate for gun reform. She’s the vice president of VictimsFirst — a nonprofit organization that assists mass shooting survivors and families of victims in the aftermath of tragedy. After a shooting, the 28-year-old lends herself through VictimsFirst to the affected however they see best: She shoulders medical bills and runs grocery store errands.
]For a survivor, she said, simple gestures are often most meaningful.
The group that later becane VictimsFirst helped Parker after the Pulse massacre when her biggest priorities were scheduling medical appointments and working up the energy to leave the house.
“Jesus, it was so much,” she said. “My brain was all over the place, but the first thing I did need was paying off some stuff that I had from school.”
Today, Parker’s work takes her everywhere: to Colorado Springs, where five people died in a shooting at gay bar Club Q, and to Buffalo, New York, where 10 people died in a supermarket shooting. It also brings her to her own past — and the cousin she left behind in Orlando.
Parker is a Philadelphia native and resides there today. Yet by chance she found herself dancing on Pulse’s Latin night June 12, 2016, with Murray and her friend Patience Carter. She was still 20 and the oldest of the group. Her family vacationed in Orlando annually but had never been to the nightclub before then.
The girls circulated in the Caribbean and hip hop rooms and watched drag performances. They were ready to go when bullets began zooming past them. Murray and Carter managed to leave but then went back for Parker. Instinctively, Parker pulled the girls into the bathroom, ignoring an exit nearby. It was a split-second decision that cost them their safety. They were hostages.
“It still burns me to this day,” she said, “because there’s nothing that I could have done to change that moment.”
Before that day — that moment and those that followed — Parker aspired to be a celebrity makeup artist.
Then came the shooter.
He murdered the set of people in the first bathroom stall, then the second. He shot all three girls, Parker in her arm and breast, and cousin Murray, 18, in her arms.
Captive in the bathroom for three hours, Parker witnessed the gunman make his rounds, sometimes shooting at dead bodies. When he returned to the bathroom — which he did three more times — she stared at him.
“I want him to think, at least I died with my eyes open,” she said.
She eyed the standoff between the gunman and the police outside. She saw his body fall to the ground and bullets ricochet.
But she didn’t see that one of the gunman’s last three shots hit Murray’s ear — a blow that made her the youngest of 49 victims.
“For a long time, I was messed up,” Parker said. “I didn’t know what direction of life I was going to take, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Her godsister, Benita Dowdell-Price, said in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel that Parker would often ask why she was spared in the shooting. But, she said, speaking with other survivors through VictimsFirst gave Parker a purpose.
“I was very much concerned about it until I saw her actually do it and it became therapeutic for her,” she said. “This is why she’s still supposed to be here.”
In an epiphany, Parker began advocacy work in 2019, which led her to Jeff Dion, executive director of the Mass Violence Survivors Fund. That organization works in conjunction with VictimsFirst — the latter aids in the immediate aftermath of a shooting and the fund delivers community donations to survivors and families of victims.
In 2021, Parker served on committees Dion oversaw for other shootings, like Buffalo and Oxford. There, she offered a survivor’s opinion while fellow committee members determined how to distribute funds to the communities.
“[Parker] more than other committee members would engage in direct contact with survivors,” Dion said.
Later that year, VictimsFirst co-founder Anita Busch invited Parker to join her organization. When there’s a shooting, the VictimsFirst members available at the time flock to the site to evaluate what the community needs, which often depends on the actual location.
In Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman shot and killed 19 kids and two adults, VictimsFirst volunteers focused on in-person conversations and bills that had to be handled in paper form because of a lack of Wi-Fi in the rural environment.
But after the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, Parker remembered the community there expressing a greater interest in mental health services than some of the other sites she’s visited.
Parker appreciates the authenticity of both VictimsFirst and the Mass Violence Survivors Fund. Having returned to Philadelphia after the shooting, she said it was difficult determining which Orlando-based groups seeking to commemorate the Pulse tragedy were worthwhile.
“I was so tired of different organizations asking me, ‘We would love to have you on the board,’ just to have my name on the board,” she said.
Parker said talking to survivors makes her feel good.
“The most meaningful part of it is they always say, ‘Thank you,’” she said.
Still, it can be overwhelming at times to relive her trauma. When her work becomes triggering, she said she takes a moment to herself to breathe, meditate and disconnect from the job.
“The solace that it brings me is that I was able to help them so I can continue to move forward,” she said.
Parker said her cousin Murray would be proud of where she is now. In her free time, Parker still works with makeup, which she said Murray would be especially happy about.
“Turn your pain into gain. She had it written on her wall in her bedroom. It’s still there to this day,” she said. “I just refuse to let her name go in vain. I feel like I owe it to her.”
