Every week between now and the one-year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shootings, Orlando Weekly will profile a person killed on June 12, 2016. This week: Jean Carlos Nieves Rodriguez
In his final musings, Jean Carlos Nieves Rodriguez wrote on Facebook about love.
"I want and I wish to feel how it feels that someone loves you," the 27-year-old native Puerto Rican said before his death.
Nieves Rodriguez may not have found his true love, but the love he showed others was moving. He had recently bought a house so he and his mother could live in a nicer place, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He was a support system for his sister, Valeria Monroig, and would pay her phone bill when she couldn't. Once, he told his sister, "I love you more than I love myself," according to the Sentinel.
Nieves, a graduate from Orlando's Oak Ridge High School, had worked at McDonald's since he was 15 and recently became the manager of a check-cashing store. On June 12, he was hanging out with close friends at the gay nightclub Pulse, including Simon Carrillo and Rodolfo Ayala. All three perished in the mass shooting that early morning.
His mother, Dimarie Rodriguez, tells El Vocero that her son was an exemplary child who always helped others.
"He lived for his family," she says. "He was a good boy. A professional. All he did was for his mother, and I think he prepared us. He would always talk to us a lot, and he wanted the best for us."