The Pulse Nightclub Shooting | #454
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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.
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.
I feel like your dad having a YouTube show in the late, were we talking in the 2000s?
Yeah, it must have been.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What events led to the Pulse nightclub shooting?
0:00–2:26
2
Who was Omar Mateen and what was his background?
2:26–8:22
3
What were the circumstances surrounding the attack on Pulse nightclub?
8:22–14:24
4
How did the FBI respond to Mateen's actions before the shooting?
14:24–19:46
5
What were the immediate impacts of the shooting on the community?
19:46–26:35
6
What role did Mateen's family play in his life and actions?
26:35–33:05
7
How did the investigation unfold after the shooting?
33:05–40:15
8
What conclusions can be drawn about the motivations behind Mateen's attack?
40:15–1:15:57