“We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,” he said. President Obama called the attack “especially heartbreaking” and ordered White House flags flown at half-staff in memory of the victims.“This guy wanted to kill all of us,” Jeannette McCoy, 37, told The Post. Survivors described desperately hiding from the killer and jumping out of his way as he barreled toward them, gunning down victims.One probe involved contact that Mateen had with a fellow Floridian who became the first American suicide bomber to strike in Syria. The FBI said Mateen had twice been investigated for possible terror ties but that the results were inconclusive.Three US officials said no evidence linking the massacre to any terror group had yet been uncovered. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released by its Amaq news agency, saying the onslaught “was carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” Reuters reported. The madman held cops at bay for about three hours, until authorities used an armored vehicle to burst through the wall of another room that held about 15 to 25 people, Dyer said.Ī furious gunfight with 11 SWAT team members followed, during which Mateen was killed and a cop was saved from death when a shot struck his Kevlar helmet. Mateen barricaded himself in a room with about five to eight hostages, said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.
Mateen, who worked as a security officer, was armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a pistol that the feds say he bought “in the past few days” when he started spraying bullets at about 350 patrons inside the Pulse dancehall around 2 a.m., officials said.Īn off-duty cop working as a security guard at the club returned fire, prompting Mateen to retreat further into the hotspot and take hostages, officials said. Omar Mateen, 29, called 911 and pledged his allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombings early on in his bloodbath, according to reports. Suspected gay nightclub mass shooter Omar Mateen. A homophobic ISIS sympathizer killed at least 50 people and wounded 53 others during a rampage at a gay nightclub in Florida early Sunday - marking the country’s deadliest mass shooting.