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Orlando Gunman Attacks Gay Nightclub, Leaving 50 Dead

ORLANDO, Fla. — A man who called 911 to proclaim allegiance to
the Islamic State terrorist group, and who had been investigated
in the past for possible terrorist ties, stormed a gay nightclub
here Sunday morning, wielding an assault rifle and a pistol, and
carried out the worst mass shooting in United States history,
leaving 50 people dead and 53 wounded.

The attacker, identified by law enforcement officials as Omar
Mateen, a 29-year-old who was born in New York, turned what had
been a celebratory night of dancing to salsa and merengue music
at the crowded Pulse nightclub into a panicked scene of
unimaginable slaughter, the floors slicked with blood, the dead
and the injured piled atop one another. Terrified people poured
onto the darkened streets of the surrounding neighborhood, some
carried wounded victims to safety, and police vehicles were
pressed into service as makeshift ambulances to rush people to
hospitals.

Joel Figueroa and his friends “were dancing by the hip-hop area
when I heard shots, bam, bam, bam,” he said, adding, “Everybody
was screaming and running toward the front door.”

Pulse, which calls itself “Orlando’s Latin Hotspot,” was holding
its weekly “Upscale Latin Saturdays” party. The shooting began
around 2 a.m., and some patrons thought at first that the
booming reports they heard were firecrackers or part of the
loud, thumping dance music.

Some people who were trapped inside hid where they could,
calling 911 or posting messages to social media, pleading for
help. The club posted a stark message on its Facebook page:
“Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

Hundreds of people gathered in the glare of flashing red lights
on the fringes of the law enforcement cordon around the
nightclub, and later at area hospitals, hoping desperately for
some word on the fates of their relatives and friends.

More than 12 hours after the attack, anguished relatives paced
between Orlando Regional Medical Center and a nearby hotel as
they waited for word. They were told that so many were gunned
down that victims would be tagged as anonymous until the
hospital was able to identify them.

“We are here suffering, knowing nothing,” said Baron Serrano,
whose brother, Juan Rivera, 36, had been celebrating a friend’s
birthday with his husband and was now unaccounted for. “I cannot
understand why they can’t tell me anything because my brother is
a very well-known person here in Orlando. He is a hairstylist,
and everybody knows him.”

A tally of victims whose relatives had been notified began
slowly building on a city website; by 6 p.m., it had six names.
Among them was Juan Ramon Guerrero, a 22-year-old man of
Dominican descent who had gone to the club with his boyfriend,
Christopher Leinonen, who goes by the name Drew, because they
wanted to listen to salsa. A friend, Brandon Wolf, watched
people carry Mr. Guerrero outside, his body riddled with gunshot
wounds.

But no one knew what had become of Mr. Leinonen. His mother,
Christine, anxious because of health problems, had woken at 3
a.m. to news of the shooting, and learned from Mr. Wolf that her
son had been inside.

A three-hour standoff followed the initial assault, with people
inside effectively held hostage until around 5 a.m., when law
enforcement officials led by a SWAT team raided the club, using
an armored vehicle and explosives designed to disorient and
distract. Over a dozen police officers and sheriff’s deputies
engaged in a shootout with Mr. Mateen, leaving him dead and an
officer wounded, his life saved by a Kevlar helmet that
deflected a bullet.

At least 30 people inside were rescued, and even the hardened
police veterans who took the building and combed through it,
aiding the living and identifying the dead, were shaken by what
they saw, said John Mina, the Orlando police chief. “Just to
look into the eyes of our officers told the whole story,” he
said.

It was the worst act of terrorism on American soil since Sept.
11, 2001, and the deadliest attack on a gay target in the
nation’s history, though officials said it was not clear whether
some victims had been accidentally shot by law enforcement
officers.

The toll of 50 dead is larger than the number of murders in
Orlando over the previous three years. Of an estimated 320
people in the club, nearly one-third were shot. The casualties
far exceeded those in the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, where
32 people were killed, and the 2012 shooting at an elementary
school in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people died.

“In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another,”
President Obama said in a special address from the White House.
“We will not give in to fear or turn against each other.
Instead, we will stand united as Americans to protect our people
and defend our nation, and to take action against those who
threaten us.”


As he had done after several previous mass shootings, the
president said the shooting demonstrated the need for what he
called “common-sense” gun measures.

“This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is
for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot
people in a school or a house of worship or a movie theater or a
nightclub,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to decide if that’s the
kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a
decision as well.”

The shooting quickly made its way into the presidential
campaign. Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee,
who has accused Mr. Obama of weakness on radical Islam and has
called for barring Muslim immigrants, suggested on Twitter that
the president should resign.

“Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic
terrorism,” he wrote. “I don’t want congrats, I want toughness &
vigilance. We must be smart!”

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, released a
statement saying: “We need to redouble our efforts to defend our
country from threats at home and abroad. That means defeating
international terror groups, working with allies and partners to
go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to
recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses
at home.”

Fears of violence led to heightened security at lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender events and gathering places around the
country. Law enforcement officials in Santa Monica, Calif.,
confirmed the arrest on Sunday of a heavily armed man who said
he was in the area for West Hollywood’s gay pride parade. The
authorities, however, said they did not know of any connection
between the California arrest and the Orlando shooting.

The F.B.I. investigated Mr. Mateen in 2013 when he made comments
to co-workers suggesting he had terrorist ties, and again the
next year, for possible connections to Moner Mohammad Abusalha,
an American who became a suicide bomber in Syria, said Ronald
Hopper, an assistant agent in charge of the bureau’s Tampa
Division. But each time, the F.B.I. found no solid evidence that
Mr. Mateen had any real connection to terrorism or had broken
any laws. Still, he is believed to be on at least one watch list.

Mr. Mateen, who lived in Fort Pierce, Fla., was able to continue
working as a security guard with the security firm G4S, where he
had worked since 2007, and he was able to buy guns. The federal
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Mr.
Mateen had legally bought a long gun and a pistol in the past
week or two, though it was not clear whether those were the
weapons used in the assault, which officials described as a
handgun and an AR-15 type of assault rifle.

A former co-worker, Daniel Gilroy, said Mr. Mateen had talked
often about killing people and had voiced hatred of gays,
blacks, women and Jews.

Around the time of the massacre, Mr. Mateen called 911 and
declared his allegiance to the Islamic State, the brutal group
that has taken over parts of Syria, Iraq and Libya, Agent Hopper
said. Other law enforcement officials said he called after
beginning his assault.

Hours later, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL,
claimed responsibility in a statement released over an encrypted
phone app used by the group. It stated that the attack “was
carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” according to a
transcript provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks
jihadist propaganda.

But officials cautioned that even if Mr. Mateen, who court
records show was briefly married and then divorced, was inspired
by the group, there was no indication that it had trained or
instructed him, or had any direct connection with him. Some
other terrorist attackers have been “self-radicalized,”
including the pair who killed 14 people in December in San
Bernardino, Calif., who also proclaimed allegiance to the
Islamic State, but apparently had no contact with the group.

The Islamic State has encouraged “lone wolf” attacks in the
West, a point reinforced recently by a group spokesman, Abu
Muhammad al-Adnani, in his annual speech just before the holy
month of Ramadan. In past years, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda
ramped up attacks during Ramadan.

American Muslim groups condemned the shooting. “The Muslim
community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or
any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an
appalling act of violence,” said Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando
regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations.

Lizette Alvarez reported from Orlando, and Richard Pérez-Peña
from New York. Reporting was contributed by Wendy Thompson and
Les Neuhaus from Orlando; Alan Blinder in Fort Pierce, Fla.;
Rukmini Callimachi from Paris; Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt
from Washington; and Steve Kenny, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Rick
Rojas and Daniel Victor from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/us/orlando-nightclub-
shooting.html
 

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