Fifty people were killed and 53 more wounded after a gunman who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday morning. The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history and the country’s worst terror attack since September 11, 2001.
American-born Omar Mateen, who was of Afghan heritage and lived in Fort Pearce, about a two-hour drive from Orlando, reportedly used an assault rifle and a pistol during the attack the Pulse nightclub. He was killed by police after a three-hour standoff.
“It appears he was organized and well-prepared,” Orlando Police Chief John Mina said early Sunday.
Mateen called 911 around the time of the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS, a U.S. official told CNN. Mateen also reportedly mentioned the Boston marathon bombers during his phone call. ISIS’s Amaq news agency said that the attack was “carried out by an Islamic State fighter.”
NBC News reported that the FBI had twice investigated Mateen, in 2013 and 2014, but the results were inconclusive.
The FBI first looked into Mateen in 2013 because of a statement he had made about radical Islamic propaganda, law enforcement officials told NBC News. FBI Special Agent in Charge Ron Hopper said that the investigation began after Mateen made offensive comments to coworkers. He was interviewed twice, but the investigation was closed after the FBI wasn’t able to confirm that he had ties to radical Islam, Hopper said.
He was then interviewed again by the FBI in 2014 when they learned he might have a connection to an American suicide bomber, but the investigation was closed because the FBI determined that “contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship,” Hopper said. …
Mateen legally bought the two guns he used in the shooting in the past week, according Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Assistant Special Agent in Charge Trevor Velinor.
“We know enough to say this was an act of terror and act of hate,” President Barack Obama said in a speech from the White House.
Mateen’s father Seddique told NBC News on Sunday that the attack had “nothing to do with religion,” and that his son had gotten angered after seeing two men kissing each other while he was out in Miami with his wife and child a few months ago.
Seddique Mateen once posted a video to YouTube expressing gratitude to the Taliban, The Washington Post reported. Over the past few years, Seddique Mateen appeared on a California-based Afghan TV channel to discuss Afghan politics, and frequently posted clips of his appearances on YouTube. One of those clips praised the Taliban: “Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up,” he said. “Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon,” a reference to the colonial-era border between Pakistan and Afghanistan that still exists today.
Just before the shooting, the elder Mateen posted a rambling video on Facebook in which he seemed to pretend to be the president of Afghanistan, ordering the arrests of prominent Afghan politicians while dressed in army fatigues.
[Photo: ABC News / YouTube]