Mayor Buddy Dyer said Wednesday that Mateen drove around the Orlando area and “visited several locations”. West said the two of them had never actually met, but he saw Mateen just before the shooting. “He’s a homosexual and he was trying to pick up men”, said Mr Van Horn. “He would walk up to them and then he would maybe put his arm around ’em or something and maybe try to get them to dance a little bit or something”.
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The attack early Sunday ended with Mateen being shot to death by a SWAT team.
At least four other customers at Pulse shared with the Orlando Sentinel that they had seen the shooter at the nightclub in the past.
At a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando, shooting survivor Patience Carter described praying to die as she lay on a nightclub bathroom floor covered in water and blood.
A Disney manager who requested anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak told the Orlando Sentinel a Magic Kingdom manager told him that Mateen had been at that theme park in April. “If I did see something was wrong, I would have called the police department or the Federal Bureau of Investigation to report him”. “I made peace with God”. “I want to know why did he do this”.
Investigators have said there is no evidence that Mateen had been in contact with any outside groups such as IS.
Questions have been raised about Omar Mateen’s motives for attacking the popular LGBTQ nightclub amid claims he frequented the bar and had profiles on gay dating apps. One of them, head of security Estella Peterkin, said she had to kick him out multiple times for bad behavior.
The shooting hit Orlando’s Latino community hard – the club was hosting a “Latin Night” when the attack occurred. It was also reported that Mateen, a security guard, had visited Pulse on a dozen occasions, used gay dating applications, while others suggested he may himself have been gay or bisexual.
A man who attended the police academy with Mateen in 2006 told the Palm Beach Post that Mateen once had asked him out romantically. It was changed since having a same-sex attraction is not the same as being gay. His ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, said he was a mentally unstable man who would frequently abuse her, both verbally and physically.
“She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information”, King said.
“So far, we see no indication that this was a plot directed from outside the United States, and we see no indication that he was part of any kind of network”, FBI Director James Comey said Monday.
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An FBI representative said Mateen “was organized and well prepared” for the attack, and the ATF confirmed that he was armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle and a handgun that he had legally bought a few days before.
