A former colleague said he constantly made homophobic, sexist and racist remarks. Those claims “certainly change the perspective”, the source said.
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No men have publicly come forward claiming to have had sexual contact with him. His Afghan-immigrant father suggested he may have acted out of anti-gay hatred, and said his son got angry recently about seeing two men kiss.
The process could take some time, as investigators need to finish collecting evidence and establish a timeline for Mateen’s activities leading to Sunday’s attack at the gay club Pulse, in which 49 people were killed, the officials said.
It’s unclear when Mateen married his second wife, Noor Salman, but an August 30, 2013, property deed in Saint Lucie County identified them as a married couple.
“I kind of feel a little guilty that I didn’t fight harder”, Gilroy said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he might be gay”.
“I am as shocked as you are”, he told CNN. “He said he was going to kill a whole bunch of people”. To some, he was a homophobic bigot.
Mateen was married twice, and was the father of a 3-year-old boy.
“He ended up pulling a knife”, Callen explained. “He came from a very nice family”, Alladin says.
Yet if he was gay or bisexual, Mateen was clearly not at peace with who he was.
“He was an angry person, violent in nature, and a bigot to nearly every class of person”, former co-worker Dan Gilroy told CNN affiliate WPTV. Neither can people who have been convicted of two or more DUIs, have been involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital or have a restraining order against them.
Victim of the Ouls mass shooting, Kimberly Morris. Was he struggling with his own sexuality? But Van Horn said his friends soon “told me they didn’t want me talking to him, because they thought he was a odd person”.
Authorities are investigating many angles to understand what prompted him to carry out the attack.
In the days leading up to the attack, Mateen appeared to be scouting locations.
BERLIN, GERMANY – JUNE 13: A mourner named Clara places flowers at a makeshift memorial during a vigil for victims of a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida the previous day, in front of the United States embassy on June 13, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. A law enforcement official said the gunman made a 911 call from the nightclub professing allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
CBS News said in a report that club-goers have told investigators that Mateen had been at Pulse previously.
“The FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media”, the boyfriend, who was not named in the report, said. She also accompanied Mateen on surveillance trips to Disney World and Disney Springs, an outdoor shopping and entertainment complex.
Salman, as identified by the New York Post, was seen early Tuesday morning at the home she formerly shared with Omar Mateen gathering her belongings and shielding her face from cameras.
He even saw Mateen an hour before the shooting.
“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent”, said Ty Smith, who remembered seeing Mateen inside at least a dozen times.
Mateen attended evening prayer services at the city’s Islamic Center three to four times a week, most recently with his young son, said Imam Syed Shafeeq Rahman. Mateen claimed he made the remarks in anger because co-workers were teasing him and discriminating against him as a Muslim, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation eventually closed the case, Comey said.
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He said he asked his employers not to be assigned to work alongside Mateen, but this request was denied. G4S determined Mateen’s comments were “exaggerated”.
