During the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting last month, several victims texted family members to call 911.
Eddie Justice was one of them. He texted "call police" to his mother. One minute later his text read "I'm gonna die."
Justice was unable to text police directly because Orlando, like most U.S. cities, doesn't have text-to-911 capability.
In California, agencies in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties were the first to implement the technology in December of last year. The program went into effect just two weeks after 14 people were killed in the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center.
Cyndee Freeman, Communications Manager with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, spearheaded the implementation of the county's text-to-911 program.
"If you're in a situation where it's an emergency and it's too dangerous for you to make a voice call, or you're deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired," Freeman says,"This is what it's for."
Freeman says the possibility that people might overuse or misuse the technology was a major concern, but so far it hasn't been a problem. Typically, only 1 to 2 texts arrive each day.
To avoid getting inundated with unnecessary texts, San Bernardino County's message to the public has been "Call if you can. Text if you can't."
Freeman says a voice call is preferable because information can be exchanged more quickly and because the dispatcher can glean more information from a phone call than from a text.
On a voice call "you can tell whether they're frightened, or you can hear noises in the background where you don't have that with text."
But Freeman says in active shooter or hostage situations like the ones in Orlando and San Bernardino, "where they don't want someone to hear, they're hiding in a location, it definitely would benefit in those situations."
Now Freeman is advising other agencies in California and neighboring states on how to successfully deploy their own text-to-911 programs. Thirteen agencies in L.A. County are currently in the early stages of deployment.