The deadliest shooting attack in U.S. history killed at least 50 people at a popular gay nightclub and injured 53.
Authorities said Omar S. Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in downtown Orlando in an onslaught that sent patrons scrambling for the exits. Many – who believed they were hearing firecrackers – remained trapped inside in what became an hourslong siege. During the attack, Mr. Mateen took time to call 911 and claim allegiance to Islamic State, officials said, leading them to treat the shooting as a terror attack inspired by a foreign terror organization.
Police shot and killed Mr. Mateen at about 5 a.m. Sunday, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said. He had carried an assault rifle and a handgun, Mr. Mina said.
In a brief press conference Sunday, President Barack Obama called the shootings an “act of terror and act of hate.”
Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen, was identified as the suspect in the mass shooting.
In the midst of the attack, Mateen called 911 and pledged his allegiance to ISIS, according to two law enforcement officials.
But there’s no evidence ISIS directed or had prior knowledge of the attack.
ISIS, which is based in Syria, has targeted gay men for beatings and murder in the Middle East and has filmed its members throwing some men suspected of being gay from the roofs of buildings.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said today that the FBI had taken an interest in Mateen twice: first in 2013 after he made “inflammatory” comments to co-workers and then again the next year after he was linked to another U.S. radical who became a suicide bomber in Syria.
However, he was not under investigation or surveillance at the time of the shooting, Hopper said.
Law enforcement sources said the weapons used the attacker were a Glock 17 handgun and an AR-style semi-automatic rifle.
“He was not a stable person,” the ex-wife said, according to the Washington Post. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
He later remarried and appears to have a young son with his new wife
Source: ABC News
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