The source told Reuters that a federal grand jury had been convened and could charge Omar Mateen’s wife Noor Salman as early as Wednesday.
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Salman told the Federal Bureau of Investigation she had noticed changes in her husband’s behavior and tried to dissuade him from doing anything violent, the official said.
Noor Zahi Salman, the wife of Omar Mateen, has reportedly told authorities she knew her husband’s intentions before his bloody massacre in Orlando, she was with him when he bought ammunition and she’d even driven him to Pulse nightclub and Disney World “because he wanted to scope them out”.
One source said that Noor was forbidden to leave her home in Port St. Lucie, Florida, to visit her family in California.
“You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes.now taste the Islamic state vengeance (sic)”, Mateen wrote, according to CBS.
Jeannette McCoy made it out of the Pulse nightclub alive on June 12 as gunman Omar Mateen continued a shooting that also wounded and maimed 53 others before he died in a hail of police gunfire.
Yahoo News Now’s Paul Beban spoke to former southern Florida U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey on Tuesday about the charges that Salman may now face.
The official says investigators had been told that Mateen and his wife had been at the Pulse nightclub on a prior occasion and were trying to confirm the accuracy of that statement.
A law enforcement official told ABC News that she may have known something about the incident in advance but claims she tried to talk him out of the assault.
Gay dating app Jack’d did not immediately return a call for comment; Grindr officials said they “will continue to cooperate with the authorities and do not comment on ongoing investigations;” and Adam4Adam spokesman David Lesage said the company is looking at conversations and profiles in the Orlando area for any activity by Mateen but hasn’t found anything yet.
“I don’t think she was involved”.
Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, denied his son was gay and said that if he had been in the nightclub before, he may have been “scouting the place”. Mateen’s ex-wife told ABC News that he was a “sick person” and was abusive to her in their marriage.
Mateen was “cool and calm” during their conversations, according to police, and didn’t make any demands.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said Mateen appeared to have been “an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalised”. “He didn’t allow her (Noor) to come here”, said neighbor Rajinder Chahal.
The FBI has recovered Mateen’s phone and will use location data to verify whether he previously visited the club, the official said.
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Hopper appealed for the public’s help in retracing Mateen’s movements and contacts, and said investigators were going back years in time in search of a motive or possible accomplices.
