‘I need to get to my kids:’ Mom killed in Dayton mass shooting FaceTimed boyfriend before she died

DAYTON (WCMH/CNN) — Saundra James is mourning her 27-year-old daughter, Lois Oglesby, who FaceTimed the father of her children just before she died after being shot in the head early Sunday morning during a mass shooting in Dayton.

“She said babe, come and get me. He said, no you need to get to the hospital. She said no. I need to get to my kids … and then that was it,” James said.

Oglesby had just given birth a couple of months ago to a baby girl and was looking forward to a night out with her girlfriends when she went out to the Oregon District last weekend.

But she never made inside the bar.

“She said, Mommy, I can have fun too. I said, yeah, you can have fun sometimes, too, babe, she said I haven’t been out, I’m going to go out and I’m gonna have some drinks. I said okay, I told her to be careful,” said Saundra James, Oglesby’s mother. “Be careful. I knew she was gonna call me, I knew she was gonna call me, but she didn’t call.”

After Oglesby was shot she FaceTimed her boyfriend who was watching the kids and told him she had been grazed by a bullet.

James and her daughter’s boyfriend rushed to the scene, but Oglesby died before they arrived.

“I couldn’t get to where she was. He got to where he could see her with the cover over her and he was angry because he wanted her off the ground,” James said.

Oglesby was one of nine people killed by Connor Betts, the 24-year-old who opened fire in downtown Dayton using a high powered assault-style rifle during a mass shooting just after 1 a.m. Sunday in the city’s Oregon entertainment district.

The shooting injured at least 37 other people.

Betts, who was wearing body armor, was shot and killed by police about 30 seconds after the shooting began, according to police.

The shooter’s sister, Megan Betts, 22, was among the victims along with Monica Brickhouse, 39; Nicholas Cumer, 25; Thomas McNichols, 25; Saeed Saleh, 38; Logan Turner, 30, Beatrice N. Warren-Curtis, 36, and Derrick Fudge, 57.

James said she spoke to a woman who was near Oglesby when she died.

“Somebody get my kids,” were her last words, James said.

Oglesby and her friends were not there three minutes before she was shot.

“They didn’t have any drinks. They didn’t even get inside the bar. They were outside,” James said.

Oglesby was a loving mom who loved not only her children but all children.

She worked at a daycare center and had dreams of becoming a pediatric nurse.

“My daughter was beautiful inside and out. The love that she showed for kids the compassion that she had for children. It was just amazing,” James said.

During Oglesby’s first pregnancy years ago, she’d been carrying twins. But when only one survived, she explained to her daughter, Hannah that her twin sister had gone to heaven.

Now, this.

“She says she wants her to come down. She knows she’s in heaven but she says she wants her to come down, just like … when it happened, every phone that rang when the people were here. She kept asking, is that my mom, someone call my mom. She wants someone to call her mommy.”

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