Last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department jointly released a partial transcript of the call the shooter, Omar Mateen, made to the Orlando Police Department just before he started opening fire in Pulse.
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After a gunman opened fire at a gay nightclub in Florida this month, police dispatchers fielded calls from people inside who screamed of being shot, begged for help and spoke in hushed voices of the bloody scene around them.
Someone said there were two shooters, and at one point dispatchers heard Orlando Regional Medical Center was under attack.
“My caller is no longer responding, just an open line with moaning”, one dispatcher said in the report. Multiple people screaming. Someone is scraming (sic) I’m shot.
Caller “has no idea who the shooter is”, the supervisor notes.
The police report said that gunshots were heard after the shooter was reported trapped in the bathroom, and calls showed the mounting toll of the rampage.
“Saying he pledges to the Islamic State”, a dispatcher wrote at 2:40 a.m.
The report recounted where patrons hid in the nightclub: in an office upstairs, in a cupboard, in a dressing room and behind a stage. One said that there was a second gunman, another told police that Mateen had several bombs strapped to his chest.
About two hours after the standoff started, with Orlando police forcing the gunman to retreat into one of the bathrooms at Pulse, police dispatch heard that the gunman had bombs strapped to him and that he was reloading his guns.
According to the time-stamped calls, nine people were evacuated through the air conditioner window of a dressing room at 4.21am. At 5.17am, dispatchers heard: “Bad guy down”.
The city of Orlando released hundreds of pages of documents Tuesday related to the Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 people dead.
Released records included text messages made and received by the Orlando police chief, fire chief and fire marshal, and police and dispatch records.
The attorneys for the owners of the Pulse nightclub shooting released a statement on Tuesday.
Fire department spokeswoman Ashley Papagni backed up Mr Benitez’s contention. She said the exit door was deemed inoperable because of the light bulb problem in the exit sign.
But the records released Tuesday also suggest that the gay nightclub had twice the number of exits needed to accommodate its maximum occupancy of 300 patrons.
Almost two dozen news media organizations – including The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times – contend that city officials are wrongly withholding recordings of 911 calls and communications between Mateen and the Orlando Police Department.
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Officials notably have not released any audio of 911 calls, nor have they made public complete transcripts of the police negotiations with the shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen. Mateen was killed in a shootout with police. “The city values transparency, but must ensure that the release of records complies with the many Florida law exemptions created to protect the privacy of the victims and the integrity of the investigation”. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
