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Chapter 1: What events led to the Pulse nightclub shooting?
A few minutes before 2am on the 12th of June 2016, a van pulled up outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Driving was 29-year-old Omar Mateen. He'd made the two-hour trip alone from his home in South Florida with an AR-15-type rifle and handgun on the back seat.
Pulse was one of Orlando's biggest clubs, and it attracted a hell of a crowd at the weekend, especially on its upscale Latin Saturdays. A crowd of hundreds of mostly gay, mostly Latino men gathered together to dance to salsa and merengue until the small hours. Most of them were regulars.
Anyone who's ever been to a gay club will know that it's much more than a place to buy expensive cocktails and let loose on the sticky dance floor. If you're me, it's somewhere to make enemies of bouncers. A gay club is meant to be a haven of acceptance, a place to connect and be free, but sometimes hate finds a way in. And on this night, it walked in through the front door.
What followed was the deadliest mass shooting the US had ever seen until that day. Mateen walked in and fired hundreds of rounds into the unsuspecting crowd. Bodies collapsed, and within minutes, the floor was slick with blood.
Those who could ran for the exits, but many were trapped in bathroom stools or behind bars or DJ decks, and they were stuck there for three long hours of unimaginable terror. 49 people were killed that night.
Just before he started this murderous rampage, Mateen had made a statement. He had clearly pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State. And afterwards, IS itself claimed the attack.
In the aftermath of this nightmare... Alongside the horror, there was confusion.
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Chapter 2: Who was Omar Mateen and what was his background?
On the face of it, it looks like yet another nightmarish attack on Western liberal values from a man mired in medieval fundamentalist Islamist ideology.
And while that was certainly true, there's another element to this story. Because some of the Pulse regulars actually recognised Mateen. They remembered him from the bar. Some said he was there most weeks, and some even said he'd flirted with them, danced with them, maybe even more.
Whatever the 2016 Pulse attack was, devastating, senseless, heartbreaking, profound, it was not simple, and the scars it left on a community will last for generations. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. This is Red Handed. And the truth behind the horrific Pulse shooting on the 10-year anniversary of the massacre.
After the attack, a crowd gathered in the early morning hours to wait for any word about friends or relatives who had been inside. And as the most horrific night in Orlando's history gave way to a grim, sombre day... investigators got to work finding out everything they could about the man with the gun. And thankfully, they already had a name, Omar Mateen. But who was he?
And how had he slipped through their net?
Mateen's parents, Sadiq and Sharla Mateen, had emigrated from Afghanistan to New York. And that is where Omar was born in 1986. When he was still young, he, his parents, and his three sisters moved to Port St. Lucie, a sunny city on the coast halfway between Miami and Orlando. And in a lot of ways, Mateen had a pretty regular 90s American childhood.
Obviously, as an Afghan immigrant family, the Mateens stood out a bit. But outwardly, at least, they seemed pretty moderate. For example, Mateen's mother and sisters didn't wear headscarves, and he never did his prayers during the school day, always saving it for home. The Mateens and a handful of other local Muslim families would meet at Ramadan to break fast together.
Otherwise, from the outside at least, it seems like it was all malls, McDonald's and Mortal Kombat.
Though, it does have to be said that his dad, Siddiqui Mateen, was quite the local character. He was always seen wearing dark suits, floral ties and colourful pocket squares. And he had some pretty extreme views, which he was definitely not shy about sharing. He even hosted a YouTube series called The Duran Jirga Show.
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Chapter 3: What were the circumstances surrounding the attack on Pulse nightclub?
You're allowed to hide in order to conceal the fact that you are a Muslim in a hostile environment, which is one of the places where Islam and Christianity are really opposed because Christians are encouraged never to lie and always to be proud, never to hide. And that's a very high value thing that a person can do. And it's never really encouraged to pretend to be something you're not.
But there are elements of Islam where you can. So I wonder whether that's what he would have argued.
Maybe. I think maybe what you're talking about is Takiyah. That's it. But my understanding of it is it's not necessarily that you hide, but that you dampen down your intensity, religious intensity, and even...
it's permissible to lie or to do whatever in order to survive in a hostile environment or until you know that becomes part of the great caliphate that's what I've understood obviously yeah that does make sense maybe he's like it's better that we assimilate at least outwardly though how much that actually happens is a bit of a question mark but yeah a lot of like a lot of weird things going on but I can see what you mean maybe he's just like we don't need to draw more attention to ourselves here so let's just not do that possibly
We'll come back to Sadiq Mateen and his influence over his son Omar later. But for now, let's take a look at Omar Mateen's school years. And you'll be unsurprised to hear that they weren't great. Not the best. Mateen was pretty overweight and he got a reputation as a bit of a pushover. Sometimes the whole school bus would gang up on him so he wouldn't get a seat.
It was a lonely few years for young Wateen, but then he started to push back. And soon he reinvented himself totally as a pretty serious school bully, often targeting girls in particular. His father, who dropped Omar off every morning, was dismissive, regularly brushing off complaints about his son.
In fact, Sadiq Mateen even drew a few complaints himself about his disrespectful attitude toward female teachers. What a shocker.
Omar Mateen was eventually expelled after a fight with another student. which was so bad that he was actually also charged with battery. But he wasn't prosecuted. Instead, Omar Mateen was sent to the Spectrum Alternative School in Stewart, Florida, an institution for students with behavioural issues. He was only there for a few months, but he certainly left an impression.
Is it called Spectrum on purpose? I mean, I did think that as I read that out loud. Spectrum and alternative. Good one. And yeah, it's not going to get better for him here because Omar Mateen's time as Spectrum just so happened to coincide with the September 11th attacks.
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Chapter 4: How did the FBI respond to Mateen's actions before the shooting?
But what we do know is from the data that whether his dad had some crazy views or not, he's definitely trying to at least like be chill in front of people in the US. The data does show that second generation and third generation radicalization seems to be far more prevalent. So it would match with Omar Mateen potentially being even more radical than his father. But who knows?
Again, what we do know is that Omar's childhood was defined by anger both inside and outside his home.
After high school, he moved into a two-bed condo in Fort Pierce, Florida. It was one of several owned by his family, and so they are clearly doing very well for themselves. He did various service jobs, Chick-fil-A, Walgreens, Hollister, Gold's Gym, and he did not live a particularly pious Muslim life either. He partied, drinking and taking drugs, often to excess.
Sometimes he'd get completely out of control, starting fights and blacking out.
And I think this kind of sums up Omar Mateen quite well. He very much picks and chooses the parts that he wants to go along with. And as we'll see, he's very confused about which groups he wants to affiliate himself with, whether it's ISIS or Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or Hezbollah. He's all over the place. Does that mean that it's not important the things he's taking from these groups? No.
But again, here you're seeing that he's not living a particularly religious life in terms of abstaining from very, very haram things. He's like, yeah, sick. But he still also feels very strongly and fervently about the religion and about his lack of identity and integration into the U.S., So, I don't know. He's just not a very deep thinking person.
But what he is thinking is still important to our story.
Oh, yeah, totally. I think it's all about feeling like an outsider. But he did pick and choose because he partied, he drank, he took drugs, often to excess. And sometimes he would get completely out of control, starting fights and blacking out. And it was around this time that Mateen started seriously hitting the gym.
Just like he had in the playground, he decided that throwing his weight around was the answer to all of his problems. And to turn that considerable weight into muscle, he had a little help from mystery powders and potions that he would order online. He bulked up so dramatically in so little time that he had noticeable stretch marks on his bicep.
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Chapter 5: What were the immediate impacts of the shooting on the community?
It's another part of this story that does sort of sway or skew from the usual because when people are spiraling like that to the point that they are like, I'm going to go carry out a mass killing, a terror attack, they're usually not in employment anymore. So it's very interesting that he was still working up until the day he did this. Very unusual.
And maybe things were starting to look up a little bit after he joins G4S, because a few years after landing this job, Mateen married his first wife, Zatora Yousefi. Yousefi had moved to the US from her native Uzbekistan when she was 11. She grew up in New Jersey and became a real estate agent. She met Omar Mateen online and very quickly moved to Florida to be with him.
But, sadly, Yusufi soon discovered that Omar Mateen was an unpredictable whirlwind of violence. He would regularly slap Yusufi and drag her around by her hair. One day, after he strangled her, she finally called the police. Omar Mateen wasn't charged. Yousafi later told the Washington Post this. He was not a stable person.
He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn't finished or something like that. And unsurprisingly and thankfully, the pair divorced after just nine months.
Mateen's second wife is a bit more of a mystery, and we'll return to her later on. For now, we're just going to tell you a little bit. Her name was Nur Zahi Salman. She was a Palestinian-American raised in California. They met online in 2011 on a dating site. called Arab Lounge. I guess it's no different to J-Date, really.
It just seems a bit weird. Sounds weird.
Also, Mateen's Afghani. He's not even an Arab, but he's like, I want an Arab lady, so I'm going to look in an Arab lounge.
The first time Mateen met Salman was when he flew to California with his whole family in tow. Presumably, they were desperate to marry off their disaster of a son. And it worked, because before they even flew home, the couple were engaged. And they tied the knot just three months after his divorce to Satora Yousafi was finalised. And his second wife, Salman, was stricter and more reserved.
She wore a hijab, and once she moved to Fort Pierce, she didn't venture outside the house much. And then a few years later, she gave birth to their son.
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Chapter 6: What role did Mateen's family play in his life and actions?
And at least I know why you hate me. I don't know. I don't know. No, me either. But it carries on. And then one day, Mateen started telling co-workers that he was friendly with terrorists. Mateen said that he knew the Sarnev brothers, the ones who had carried out the Boston Marathon bombings. He said that he had family connections to al-Qaeda, and he also said that he was a member of Hezbollah.
He once even told his colleagues that he'd like to, quote, die a martyr's death. And yes, look, it is worth mentioning that al-Qaeda is Sunni and Hezbollah are Shia. Ugh.
People, like, make a big thing of this because Mateen is claiming to be a member of both or being related to one side and being a member of the other, despite, of course, them being bitter enemies who are very much at war with each other. And, I don't know, people sort of use this to say that we shouldn't take what he's saying seriously.
I mean, he's doing exactly the same thing he did in high school.
Yeah.
just saying the most outrageous thing he can think of. I don't think it's actually anything to do with what he truly in his heart believes. And I think it's an illustration of that rather than that we shouldn't take him seriously or that he isn't terrifying or that he can just be ignored. I don't think it's that at all.
No, because I personally, I do think it is what he believes in his heart. I think he's very drawn to that ideology. I think he's very, very... But you can't be Sunni and Shia at the same time. No, but he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
But I think it's like people use it as a way, like him talking about the Sunni and Shia as a way to undermine his terrorism by saying, see, it's not really Islamist terror. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. One minute he's talking about Sunni. Next minute he's talking about Shia. To me, I'm like, who cares? Who cares? To me, it's like, why would it matter?
if he wasn't coherent in his murderous martyrdom beliefs. I think the fact is that you see this pattern of behavior with him that he is very drawn to radical Islamist ideologies, jihad, death, talking about martyrdom, all that kind of stuff. And given the fact that we know what he went on to do, it's obviously more than him just trying to freak out his colleagues or be a bit edgy.
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Chapter 7: How did the investigation unfold after the shooting?
Abu Salah, like Mateen, had been based in Florida. And they had both even attended the same college. And the FBI discovered that Abu Salah had lived less than a mile away from Mateen.
But again, the investigation found that any contact had been minimal. So, again, the FBI Bureau in Tampa, Florida concluded that Omar Mateen posed no threat. In fact, not only was there no terrorist link, there was very little evidence of criminal wrongdoing at all. But, you might be thinking, what about his big fight at school? And the time he strangled his wife?
And what about when he was kicked out of the police academy? Well, he was never convicted for any of it. Which is exactly why Mateen was able to get himself a Florida license to carry concealed weapons. And in May 2016, Omar Mateen legally bought a handgun, an AR-15 assault rifle, and plenty of ammunition.
Around the same time, Mateen's father, Sadiq, remembers an incident as they were walking down the shoreline in downtown Miami. Sadiq says he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other and Omar said, look at that, in front of my son they're doing that.
Two weeks later, Mateen was dead and he'd taken almost 50 gay men with him.
So, as much as I would certainly like to not do this, we do have to go back to Pulse, just after 2am on Saturday the 12th of June 2016. After getting into the building, most people stepped directly out onto the club's main dance floor. At the centre hung a huge giant glitter ball, scattering reflected light across the dancing crowd.
On one end of the room were the doors out to the fenced-in patio. And on the other side was a separate dance floor, a cocktail lounge known as the Adonis Room, with a stage for go-go dancers and drag performers. And at the back of the building, through the Adonis Room, were the bathrooms. On that Saturday night, by 2am, the night was starting to wind down.
One eyewitness later said everyone was drinking their last sip. But it's a big club, and that last sip can be the longest of the night. There were still 300 people inside at that time. Videos posted on social media show blissed-out club-goers chatting to friends and dancing away. And in the background, over the booming music, There's a sort of crackling sound.
Some thought it was firecrackers or just some heavy base from the next room. But they were wrong. It was an assault rifle and dozens of people were already dead.
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Chapter 8: What conclusions can be drawn about the motivations behind Mateen's attack?
Mateen told them, you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They're killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do when my people are getting killed over there?
His tone in these calls is infuriating. It's condescending, he's petulant and absolutely clueless. At one point he calls the police negotiator a homeboy. But obviously they had to take these threats seriously, especially because he told police that he had explosives primed in a vehicle nearby, which he would set off if they did anything stupid.
He said that he had a vest on, like the one they used in France. Presumably he's talking about the Bataclan there, that had rocked the world the year before. He said that there would be more similar attacks over the next few days. And he told the hostages that he would be putting explosive vests on four of them and sending them to the four corners of the club.
None of it was true, but no one could take any chances.
Yeah, and I think... Again, just the fact that he is calling the police, he is like saying all this stuff. He's not just gone in there, shot a bunch of people and then killed himself or blown himself up or anything. He's demanding attention. He's demanding control. He's lying to them, telling them, I've got snipers. I've got an explosive vehicle outside. I've got an explosive vest on.
Like you said, none of that's true. It's all bullshit. But he is getting off so much on controlling the police. I'm sure this also comes back to the fact that he was rejected from the police. He's like, fuck you. You're not the authority. I'm going to lord over you. This is his moment. And I'm sure he knows at the end of this, he is going to die either by suicide by cop or he will kill himself.
But he is like, I'm going to enjoy and milk every fucking moment of this night before that happens. It's absolutely what it feels like. He's not just in and out, one and done. No, and I think I take him pretty seriously. Yeah.
So while he's speaking, while he's taking all this time out of his busy night to speak to 911, police work to secure the building and get as many people out of there as they could. They helped some people escape through an air-conditioned event in a dressing room. Then the police started to prepare explosives of their own to breach the external wall of the bathroom.
An armoured vehicle and more crisis negotiators arrived, and at 5am, three long hours after Mateen first burst through the door of Pulse, a SWAT team stormed the building.
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