The gunman, identified by authorities as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was found dead inside the nightclub after a shootout with the police.
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Investigators, meanwhile, are trying to reconstruct Mateen’s movements before the rampage at the Pulse dance club and are taking a close look at his 30-year-old Palestinian-American wife, Noor Salman, and what she may have known about the attack.
Mateen also made 16 cell phone calls during the attack, Fox reports.
“There are victims in need of support now, and we ask for your patience as we ensure we are able to assist these victims in an open, transparent and equitable manner”, Dyer said.
Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who helped administer compensation funds for victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on NY and Washington and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, is flying in to Orlando to advise the city’s OneOrlando Fund, which has already raised $7.5 million, Dyer said. “I am the shooter”, Mateen said, according to Mr Gentili.
That led to a delay of several hours before the building was cleared “because all indications were that it was booby-trapped”, he said.
Those could include employment and medical records, financial statements, dating apps and other Internet services that Mateen used, and other private records.
“This was an act of violence, born out of hate, that inflicted terror on an entire community,”said Ron Hopper, special Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in charge of the case, at a press conference”.
The gunman’s first wife, Sitora Yusifiy, says Mateen beat her and forced her to split from him after only four months of marriage. Investigators were still analyzing a crime scene at which well over 100 shots were fired, a labor-intensive process.
On Monday officials said that people than Mateen were being investigated.
She has told FBI investigators that she tried to talk her husband out of some kind of attack, according to senior law enforcement officials.
“Her story has been very fluid, and we are still evaluating it”, the second official said.
At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, officials would not discuss the possibility that she or anyone else would face criminal charges. “We’re not sure what charges will be brought, or if charges will be brought”.
Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen visited online gay chat rooms despite expressing outrage at the sight of two men kissing and making inflammatory comments about gays, law enforcement officials said.
Academic records obtained by Reuters showing Mateen was frequently suspended as a student – at least twice for fighting before he was transferred to a special high school for potential dropouts – added to a disturbing portrait of the long-troubled gunman who committed the deadliest mass shooting in modern USA history.
The president also blasted Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric as risky and contrary to American values, challenged Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban and lashed out at his Republican foes who have criticized him for not using the term “radical Islam”.
Numerous survivors said they had been searched carefully by the police when they escaped the club or were rescued, to make sure they did not have explosives or guns on them.
And he called CNN affiliate News 13 in Orlando to proclaim he was carrying out the massacre on behalf of the terror group.
A survivor of the massacre, 20-year-old Patience Carter, shed more light on Mateen’s thinking, saying he talked about wanting America to “stop bombing my country” – a possible reference to his father’s native Afghanistan.
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The area around Pulse remained cordoned off by federal, state and municipal law enforcement agencies.
