See more of our top stories on Facebook »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. Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed by a SWAT team and was among the 50 found dead at the site. 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.
Some dreamt of becoming emergency medical technicians; others, photographers and nurses.
Their mothers waited for them at home and left food...
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.
11 terrorist attacks.“He started acting crazy, joking around the fact that 9/11 happened, making plane noises on the school bus and pretending he was slamming into the building,” said Robert Zirkle, who rode the school bus every day with Mateen in Stuart, Fla., 15 years ago.“He was happy that Americans were dying. I don’t know if he was always a Muslim radical, but he was excited, hyped up. “We told him if he didn’t stop making noises, we were going to beat him up.”Zitkle, who now lives in Tennessee, was a freshman at Martin County High School at the time. He was a ‘Seinfeld’ kind of guy.”The shooting dominated the presidential campaign Monday.
Mateen, he said, attended Spectrum Alternative School, a separate public school.“He was really out there,” he said of Mateen. He had people who were cordial with him or would ask him how he was doing. Democrat Hillary Clinton called for stricter gun control and Republican Donald Trump called for tighter immigration rules.
The White House announced that President Obama would travel to Orlando on Thursday “to pay his respects to victims’ families and to stand in solidarity with the community.” 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.
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.