Las Vegas

Victim's Children Mourn ‘Fighter' Killed in Las Vegas Shooting

"I texted her, 'I love you. Are you OK?' but she never texted back."

Eighteen-year-old Marcus Guillen was on a flight home from a vacation in Boston when he learned the news of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas.

His mother, 40-year-old Rocio Guillen, was at the country music concert with her fiancé Chris Jaksha, the father of Marcus Guillen's 1-year-old sister and newborn brother.

Immediately, Marcus Guillen texted Jaksha, who told him his mother had been shot in the upper leg and they had a tourniquet on her. Marcus Guillen knew he needed to try to reach his mother.

"I texted her, 'I love you. Are you OK?' but she never texted back. I guess she didn't have her phone on her."

It wasn't until the next morning that he and his family got the devastating news from Jaksha. "He said, 'I'm sorry, buddy. I did the best that I can, I did everything I could to protect her. I'm so sorry," Marcus Guillen recalled.

Marcus Guillen expressed anger at his mother's senseless killing, anger that the woman who overcame paralysis while pregnant with his 13-year-old brother, Christopher, could not overcome a hailstorm of bullets indiscriminately raining down on a crowd of innocent concertgoers.

Now he and Christopher are stuck trying to stay strong for each other and their two younger siblings, despite losing the foundation of their family.

"She was a hard worker," Marcus Guillen said. "She was a fighter, a great mother.

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