‘Quiet’ Orlando shooter Mateen once aspired to be a police officer but grew hateful and later self-radicalised
A number of possible explanations and motives for the bloodbath that left 49 victims dead have emerged, with Mateen professing allegiance to the Islamic State, his ex-wife saying he was mentally ill, and his father suggesting he was driven by hatred of gays
The photo from Omar Mateen’s high school yearbook is hardly remarkable – a toothy, dimpled smile with a peach-fuzz mustache below a mop of black hair.
His transformation from high school football player to perpetrator of America’s worst mass shooting raises questions about whether red flags were missed over the depth of his apparent sympathies with Muslim extremists.
As families of the victims grieved and the nation recoiled at the scale of yet another mass shooting, a picture began to emerge of the 29-year-old killer as a quiet, devout person who in recent years displayed a hateful and violent streak.
Early on Sunday, he stormed a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, with a handgun and AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, fatally shooting 50 people before police killed him. Fifty-three others were wounded, many critically.
A doctor says six people wounded in the shooting are “critically ill” at the hospital and another five patients are in “guarded” condition.
The FBI is investigating reports that Mateen had been a regular at the gay nightclub he attacked and had used gay dating apps, a US official briefed on the case said on Tuesday.
A number of possible explanations and motives for the bloodbath that left 49 victims dead have emerged, with Mateen professing allegiance to the Islamic State, his ex-wife saying he was mentally ill, and his father suggesting he was driven by hatred of gays.
