Carmen Capo woke to loud banging on her window. It was 6 a.m., and her son’s friend was outside. There had been a shooting at a nightclub, the young woman said, and Capo’s 20-year-old son had been injured. Frantic, Capo raced to the hospital from her Orlando home, not stopping to brush her teeth or put on a bra.
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When she arrived she learned what every mother most fears: Her son had died. “Even breathing hurts at that moment,” she said of absorbing the news that Luis Omar Ocasio Capo was gone.
“There is not a day that goes by that I and his four siblings don’t miss him because he left a huge hole in our family,” Capo said in Spanish from her home in Puerto Rico.
But if there is any bright side to the tragedy, Capo said it’s that Omar’s death has brought the rest of her family closer together. They call each other at least once a day and constantly text, sometimes 20 times a day, she said.
“Because we never know when the last ‘I love you’ will be,” Capo said.
Omar, the fourth of her five children, was born to be a star, she said.
He’d just received a callback to be a dancer at Disney World earlier that week. He was studying art at Valencia College and wanted to be an actor and celebrity, she said. He had been dancing with several teams across the country since he was 7 years old.
“I don’t want people to remember him as a victim,” Capo said. “I want people to remember him as a star, the brightest one in the sky.”
The night of June 11, Omar went to a party with a group of friends. Capo told her son, who still lived at home, to stay with her that night, but he told her he had already promised his friends he would go.
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At 1:17 a.m. Capo said she sent her son a text, reminding him that he had to work at Starbucks later that day. He texted back saying he was getting ready to leave.
“I never heard back from him again,” Capo said.
After his death, Capo moved back to her native Puerto Rico, hoping to escape the constant reminders in Orlando that her son was gone. Moving has been therapeutic, she said. She has lost 72 pounds and benefits from being surrounded by her extended family.
Every three months, she visits her son’s grave in Orlando.
She will be in town for the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. Capo, her four children and six grandchildren have rented a house in Central Florida and will be together to remember Omar. She’s even made t-shirts to celebrate him.
“I know he will be there with us,” Capo said. “We have to celebrate life, which he loved to do.”
But there is still constant heartache.
“For me, these 10 years have not passed,” Capo said, fighting back tears. “I’m just trying to survive. You have to learn to live like a clown, even though your heart is shattered, you have to smile.”
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