Mateen entered the Pulse at about 2 a.m. June 12 and at 2:02 a.m. came the call that multiple shots had been fired inside the club. But investigators have also explored claims that Mateen had used a dating app for men and had been to Pulse before the shooting, and officials have said they are investigating the crime as one of both terror and hate.
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The FBI published the heavily redacted text of Omar Mateen’s phone conversations with a dispatcher and crisis negotiators and sought to fend off criticism that police may have acted too slowly to end a three-hour standoff at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the worst mass shooting in modern US history. Mateen instead appears to have radicalized on his own through jihadist propaganda on the internet, part of a population of Americans that law enforcement officials have repeatedly expressed concern about.
The FBI and U.S. state department released partial transcripts of the four calls with the emergency operator and crisis negotiators earlier on Monday, omitting the shooter’s references to the leader of Islamic State, saying they did not want to provide a platform for propaganda. He said the bombings were why he was “out here right now”. The name of the shooter and that of the group to whom he pledged allegiance are omitted in the FBI’s press release.
The transcripts left out the names of groups and individuals Mateen praised during the calls. He then called back and spoke briefly to a dispatcher before hanging up again, at which point the dispatcher called back Mateen, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director has said.
Over the next hour, Mateen had three conversations with crisis negotiators.
In the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting, the four proposed gun control measures up for consideration by the Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass on Monday. The dispatcher and Mateen spoke briefly on that last call, Comey has said.
Although the killer is known, the investigation continues into what motivated and enabled Omar Mateen to carry out the worst mass shooting in modern US history. Her remarks at a news conference followed meetings with U.S. Attorney Lee Bentley and other law enforcement officials, including prosecutors assigned to the investigation.
Investigators have done hundreds of interviews, including with family members, and are working in particular to determine how much knowledge his wife had of the plot.
Omar Mateen, 29, paused during a three-hour siege to telephone emergency dispatchers three times and to post internet messages from inside the Pulse nightclub professing his support for Islamist militant groups. “You people are going to die and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid”.
“Those killings are on the suspect and on the suspect alone, in my mind”, he said. “All our officers acted heroically, as they were trained, and under the circumstances, did an unbelievable job”. Questions remain about why police waited so long. “I can not tell you definitely that we will ever narrow it down to one motivation. I’m just trying to clarify that that’s absolutely not true”, Mina said.
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The FBI reported that there was no shots fired inside the club between the first exchange of gunfire and the final shootout.
