Orlando Gunman Attended the Gay Club and Used Gay Dating App
Introduction:
This killer seemed to have been confused and full of hatred of which some had to be directed at himself. He grew up in a homophobic atmosphere particularly from his father who even after the shoot out still posted homophobic comments on Monday. This man does not seem to be part of any terrorist organization. His wanting people to know he was doing this because of ISIS and then naming he is doing it for Hezbollah, which one contradicts the other because they are opposing organizations. This does not seem to make sense. Didn’t he know that, like a muslim would?
May be it was something else he wanted to hide. All his secrets will come out now and his sad, confused and hateful life will lay exposed like a cadaver on the autopsy table.
I wish people will concentrate less on the religion of this man and concentrate on the religion of this man’s father (doubtful of how religious and attuned he was as a muslim) also, more on his life and what he pretended to be. People should concentrate on homophobia. The fear of gays whom in many times fear homosexuality because they are gay themselves. Also it was homophobia that killed these people not any religion in particular, it was a gay bar ge frequented filled with gay people that he chose as his target.
It’s going to be very interesting when the three FBI investigations come out with the reason he was exonerated of those. There he is making all these terrorist comments of killing cops and so on and then he is investigated and cleared.
To me all these means is, we are getting ahead of the facts. There is more to come and we should go easy with jumping to conclusions that seemed obvious but this man seems to be a little more complicated than given credit for.
The first question the FBI is trying to answer is, What connections were there to any terrorist group? Why was he wanting to die like expressed in at least one occasion long before this shooting? All the evidence shows he wanted to die. Not to talk or negotiate. He left his hostages in the bathroom and stepped outside to meet the cops and their bullets.
His father’s remarks on Facebook:
The father of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen, Seddique Mir Mateen, posted a video on Facebook on Monday addressing his son's actions.-*-
He was "not aware what complexities he had in his heart, and what caused him to go to this gay and lesbian club and shoot 50 people," he said in Dari, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.
He added that "in this month of Ramadan, the gay and lesbian issue is something that God will punish," though "the servants of God shouldn't have anything to do with it," and he was saddened by the shooting.
The gunman who attacked a Florida LGBT nightclub had attended the club before the attack and had used a gay dating and chat app, witnesses said.
Kevin West, a regular at Pulse nightclub, said Omar Mateen messaged him on and off for a year before the shooting using the gay chat and dating app Jack’d.
But they never met – until early Sunday morning.
West was dropping off a friend at the club when he noticed Mateen – whom he knew by sight but not by name – crossing the street wearing a dark cap and carrying a black cellphone about 1 a.m., an hour before the shooting.
“He walked directly past me. I said, ‘Hey,’ and he turned and said, ‘Hey,’” and nodded his head, West said. “I could tell by the eyes.”
At least four regular customers of Pulse, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender nightclub where the massacre took place, told the Orlando Sentinel on Monday that they believed they had seen Mateen there before.
"Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent," said Ty Smith, who also uses the name Aries.
He saw Mateen at the club at least a dozen times, he said.
"We didn't really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times," Smith said. "He told us he had a wife and child."
As soon as West saw photos released of Mateen after the shooting, he said, he drove to his local police station, where officers summoned FBI officials, who showed him a photo of Mateen on a computer screen.
“I said, ‘That’s him,’” West said, and turned over his phone and Jack’d log-in information to the FBI, which still had the phone late Monday, he said.
Also Monday, officials said Mateen appeared to have been radicalized by Islamic extremists on the Internet but expressed sympathies with radical groups that violently oppose each other.
On Sunday morning, Mateen told a 911 dispatcher that he was attacking Pulse on behalf of the leader of Islamic State, FBI Director James B. Comey said at a news conference Monday. Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed by a SWAT team and was among the 50 found dead at the site. Fifty-three more were wounded.
But Mateen, who was born in New York, had also expressed solidarity with the 2013 Boston bombers and an American suicide bomber who belonged to an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria opposed to Islamic State, Comey said.
The FBI previously investigated Mateen, a security guard, for 11 months for telling co-workers in 2013 that he had relatives connected to Al Qaeda, the Sunni Muslim extremist group, while claiming he was a member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, Comey said. Both groups oppose Islamic State and each other.
The FBI also briefly investigated Mateen in 2014 on suspicion of watching videos by Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Awlaki and for attending a mosque in Florida with a man who later became a suicide bomber for Al Nusra Front in Syria, which also opposes Islamic State. Both investigations were closed without an arrest. Comey defended his agents’ work but said the agency would still conduct a review.
“We know that this killing is upsetting to all Americans. We hope that our fellow Americans will not let fear become disabling,” Comey said. He added that fear “is what these savages want.”
FBI agents scrambled Monday to recover data from Mateen’s electronic media — cellphones, computers and other devices — hoping to find clues to what sparked the massacre at the nightclub, according to current and former FBI officials.
The shooting also dominated the presidential campaign Monday. Democrat Hillary Clinton called for stricter gun control and Republican Donald Trump called for tighter immigration rules.
As of midday Monday, all but two of the 49 slain victims had been publicly identified after notification of their families. They were mostly Latino men.
“There was blood all over the street. You can see where people were dragged,” said Patty Sheehan, Orlando’s first openly gay city commissioner, pointing toward the building and grimacing.
This is the heart of her downtown district. Sheehan knows the owner of the club and a bartender who witnessed the shooting and described to her how it unfolded.
“When the police went in, they told people, ‘Raise your hand if you’re alive,’ ” she said. “Some of the living covered themselves with the dead.”
She and other officials have asked residents to hold off on staging a vigil until all the victims are identified.
Orlando terror attack updates: Gunman once claimed to be member of Hezbollah, FBI says
“We will not be defined by the act of a cowardly hater,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. “We will be defined by how we respond.”
Police responding to the nightclub attack had attempted to negotiate with Mateen for hours, Police Chief John Mina said, rescuing dozens of people and confronting the shooter only when he mentioned explosives and they believed “further loss of life was imminent.”
Mina outlined the police response during a Monday briefing near the nightclub, flanked by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Dyer, federal investigators and prosecutors.
The shooting was reported at 2:02 a.m. Sunday when an off-duty Orlando police officer at the club initially confronted Mateen near an entrance and the two engaged in a gun battle, Mina said.
When more police responded, additional officers entered the club and traded fire with the gunman.
"At that time we were able to save and rescue dozens and dozens of people and get them out of the club," Mina said.
Mateen holed up with four to five hostages in a bathroom, while 15 to 20 more people were trapped in another bathroom nearby, Mina said. That’s when police backed off.
“Based on statements made by the suspect about explosives and an explosive vest, we did retreat,” Mina said.
A team of negotiators arrived and began communicating with Mateen, who sounded “cool and calm,” Mina said.
Mina said negotiators didn’t have much leverage with the gunman.
“He really wasn’t asking for anything,” the police chief said. “We were doing the asking.”
Mina would not say whether Mateen appeared to be on a suicide mission. But police kept talking to him and shortly before 5 a.m., Mina said, “that talk became a crisis for us.”
Officials decided to enter the building, Mina said, because, “there was a timeline given [by Mateen] and we believed there was an imminent loss of life.”
Police made an “explosive breach” into the building, then used an armored BearCat vehicle to punch a hole about 2 squrea feet in the wall so that dozens could escape, Mina said.
Mateen also emerged from the hole, armed with a long gun and handgun, and confronted SWAT officers backed against a wall who returned fire, killing him, Mina said.
The police chief said Mateen did not shoot between the time he retreated to the bathroom and when police breached the building. Mina defended the decision to wait and attempt to negotiate with the shooter before police finally forced their way into the building.
Mina said he was confident no one was shot during the delay nor was shot by friendly fire.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
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