On Tuesday, NBC News reported that Noor Salman, wife of Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen, may have known of his plans.
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Early Sunday, the 29-year-old Mateen opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded, the worst mass shooting in modern United States history.
It was the deadliest single US mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.
On Tuesday, US media reported that Ms Salman had gone with Mateen to buy ammunition and had also driven him to the Pulse nightclub on a previous occasion because he had wanted to survey it.
Another regular, Kevin West, told the LA Times that Mateen had messaged him on and off for a year using the gay dating app Jack’d (link SFW). The gunman’s father told reporters that the massacre was “the act of a terrorist” and adding: “I apologize for what my son did. I said, ‘Hey, ‘ and he turned and said, ‘Hey, ‘” and then nodded, West told the Times. He was fascinated with law enforcement, people who knew him said.
But a US official with knowledge of the situation told CBS News that club-goers have told investigators that Mateen had been at the club prior to the shooting. Mateen, who killed 49 people on Sunday, would often come to the club and drink there alone.
Smith and Callen made a decision to keep their distance from Mateen after they saw him pull a knife at Pulse and threaten another patron, they told the Canadian news agency.
He said he saw the gunman inside at least a dozen times. “We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times”.
“It appears she had some knowledge of what was going on”, King said.
Salman and Mateen also went to Disney World with their son in April and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly investigating whether he was scouting the major tourist attraction as a possible target, Fox News reports.
In 2006, Mateen attempted to join the police, and a colleague in his academy class said he believed Mateen was gay.
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Sitora Yusufiy, who was married to Mateen in 2009 for four months, said he had a violent temper, but could not confirm whether his pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group was the main driving force behind his actions on Sunday.
