Aurora shooting victim sent one last heartbreaking text to wife before dying: 'I love you'

A victim of the shooting in Aurora, Illinois, shooting managed to send one last heartbreaking text message to his wife before becoming one of the latest victims to gun violence in the US.

Just a day after Valentine’s Day, Terra Pinkard says she received what would be the last text she ever received from her husband, Josh.

“I love you, I’ve been shot at work,” the text read.

Ms Pinkard wrote on Facebook that the meaning behind those eight words took a moment to sink in.

“It took me several times reading it for it to hit me that it was for real,” she wrote on Sunday. “I called his hone several times, text, FaceTime, nothing.”

After exhausting those options, she said she called the plant where her husband worked and learned that the police were there. So, she drove there, then to the hospitals nearby, and discovered her husband was one of five people to be killed in the shooting.

Police have named Gary Martin, a disgruntled employee, as the man who opened fire in the Illinois town.

Martin, who also died during the shooting, reportedly began shooting after learning that he had been fired from his job.

The rampage started just as Martin found out he had been terminated from his job, at which point he pulled out a pistol he brought to the meeting and opened fire.

The shooting lasted some 90 minute before Martin was killed during a shootout with police who responded.

So far in 2019, there have been at least 1,841 deaths from guns in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and at least 3,175 injuries from guns during that time.

Those deaths have come as a part of nearly 7,000 incidents reported involving gun violence, including at least 43 mass shootings where four or more people were shot and injured or killed.