Pulse nightclub shooting

• 1. Last Call

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  Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was winding down its weekly Latin Night at around 2:00 a.m. on the 12th of June 2016. Last call had been announced, and about 320 people were still inside. The Saturday event drew a mostly Latino crowd. Kenya Michaels, a drag performer from RuPaul's Drag Race, is recorded as being on stage when the first shots came. Out in the parking lot of a neighboring car shop, a rental van had just pulled in. This was the start of the Pulse nightclub shooting. It would last about three hours, draw in police from several agencies, and leave questions that were still being argued in a federal courtroom in 2018. Why did the gunman choose this club? What did federal agents already know about him? Why did officers wait before going in? And what becomes of a building after a night like this?

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• 2. Two Minutes Past Two

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  At 2:02 a.m., Omar Mateen walked past Adam Gruler, an off-duty Orlando police officer working extra duty as a security guard, and entered through the southern entrance. Mateen was 29. He carried a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 pistol. He began firing at patrons at once, and dozens were killed or badly hurt by bullets and ricochets.

  Gruler took cover and called for help. He later told a review team that he knew his handgun was badly outmatched by the rifle. When he saw Mateen shoot two patrons trying to flee through an emergency exit, Gruler fired back. Mateen pulled into the club and kept shooting as he moved through the building, sometimes firing into bodies without checking whether they were already dead. More officers arrived from 2:04 a.m. Gruler shouted "The gunman's in the patio!" and resumed firing a minute later. Two officers joined him, and Mateen retreated farther in, then began a hostage situation in a bathroom. In less than five minutes he had fired about 200 rounds, pausing only to reload.

  Inside, many people took the noise for firecrackers or part of the music. Imran Yousuf, a recently discharged Marine Corps veteran working as a bouncer, knew at once it was gunfire. He described the sound as "high caliber." Near him, a group sat frozen beside a locked back door. Yousuf ran past them and unlatched it, and about 70 people escaped unharmed. A bartender hid beneath the glass bar. One woman survived by lying in a bathroom and covering herself with bodies.

  Bathrooms became the center of the horror. A man trapped in one with fifteen other patrons said Mateen fired sixteen times through the closed door, killing at least two. In the women's restroom the rifle jammed, so Mateen dropped it and switched to the Glock. Two survivors quoted him as saying, "I don't have a problem with black people," and that he would not stop until America stopped bombing his country. Other survivors heard him claim to have explosives and snipers around the club, and patrons trapped inside texted and called 911 to pass on the warning.

  At 2:09 a.m., the club's own Facebook page posted a plain instruction to anyone listening: "Everyone get out of pulse and keep running."

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• 3. Three Hours Inside

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  At 2:22 a.m., Mateen made the first of three 911 calls of his own. He called the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, his "homeboys." He also referred to Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an American who died in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2014. The FBI said the two men had attended the same mosque and knew each other casually. Mateen swore allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

  By then, six officers had shot out a large window and followed the gunfire to the bathroom area. They fired at Mateen when he stuck his head out, then were told to hold position. After 15 to 20 minutes, SWAT arrived and pulled them back, since they were "not really in tactical gear." Orlando Police Chief John Mina later explained that Mateen "went from an active shooter to a barricaded gunman." He added, "If he had continued shooting, our officers would have went in there." Mateen's last shot was fired between 2:10 and 2:18 a.m.

  Rescues went on through the night. The dance floor was covered with people, and one officer called out, "If you're alive, raise your hand." By 2:35 a.m., nearly all the injured had been carried out. Still inside were the hostages in the bathroom and about a dozen people hiding in dressing rooms.

  At 2:45 a.m., Mateen phoned News 13 of Orlando and said, "I'm the shooter. It's me. I am the shooter." Between 2:48 and 3:27 a.m., police negotiators spoke with him three times. He demanded that America stop bombing Syria and Iraq. When a negotiator asked, "Tell me what's going on right now, Omar?", he steered back to the airstrike that he said "triggered it." He claimed to have bombs strapped to his body and a vehicle outside packed with enough explosives to take out city blocks. Officers feared a suspicious device in the bathroom. It turned out to be a battery that had fallen from an exit sign or smoke detector.

  At around 2:30 a.m., his wife texted to ask where he was. He asked whether she had seen the news. She answered, "No?" He wrote back, "I love you, babe." She learned what was happening at 4:00 a.m., when police ordered her out of her house with her hands up. Meanwhile, Mateen searched the internet for coverage of his own attack, and police sent a tactical robot into the restroom to talk with the hostages by two-way audio.

  At 3:58 a.m., the Orlando police publicly announced the shooting. At 4:21 a.m., eight hostages escaped after officers removed an air conditioning unit from an exterior wall. Around 4:29 a.m., Mateen said he would strap explosive vests, like those used in the November 2015 Paris attacks, to four hostages and detonate them in 15 minutes. Negotiations ended, and officers prepared to blast their way in.

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• 4. The Breach

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  At 5:02 a.m., Orlando police began breaching the building's wall. The FBI reported that no shots had been heard since Mateen stopped trading fire with the first officers. Just before the breach, he went into a women's bathroom where hostages were hiding and opened fire again. Witnesses said a man gave his life to protect the woman behind him, and at least one other person died.

  At 5:05 a.m., a bomb squad set off a controlled explosion. It did not open a big enough hole in the bathroom's exterior wall, because of how the wall was built. At 5:07 a.m., a policeman drove a BearCat armored vehicle through the wall of the northern bathroom, and fourteen SWAT officers entered. They used two flashbangs to distract Mateen and fired at him.

  The breach pulled Mateen into the hallway. At 5:14 a.m., he engaged the officers. At least eleven of them fired about 150 bullets in the shootout, and Mateen was hit eight times: once in the head, three times in the torso and four times in the legs. He was reported down at 5:17 a.m. His autopsy showed he had not been drunk.

  At 5:53 a.m., the Orlando police posted on Twitter, "Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead." Thirty hostages had been freed during the operation, and police searched each survivor for guns and explosives. One SWAT officer escaped with a minor head injury after a bullet struck his Kevlar helmet.

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• 5. The Forty-Nine

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  Forty-nine people were killed at Pulse, and 58 more were injured, 53 of them by gunfire and five by other causes. Thirty-eight of the dead were pronounced dead at the scene, and eleven died at local hospitals. Nine were found in the northern bathroom. At least five died not in the first burst of gunfire but during the hostage standoff.

  Pulse was hosting Latin Night, and over 90 percent of the victims were of Hispanic background. Half of those were of Puerto Rican descent. Four Dominican and three Mexican nationals were among the dead. An off-duty Army Reserve captain, not in uniform, was also killed. Three Colombians and two Canadians were among the wounded.

  Autopsies by the Orange County Medical Examiner's Office were finished by the 14th of June and released in early August. They counted over 200 gunshot wounds. Most victims were shot more than once, from a short distance, and more than a third were shot in the head.

  The Orlando Regional Medical Center, the main regional trauma center, stood just three blocks away. It took in 44 of the wounded, and twelve others went to Florida Hospital Orlando. The trauma center performed 76 surgeries on 35 patients, and nine of its patients died there. Its last patient went home on the 6th of September, nearly three months later.

  The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in United States history until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It was also the deadliest violence against LGBTQ people in the country, surpassing the 1973 UpStairs Lounge arson. And it was the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

  The City of Orlando confirmed each name only after next of kin were told. The youngest victim, Akyra Monet Murray, was 18. The oldest, Franky J. Dejesus Velazquez, was 50.

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• 6. The Gunman and His Motive

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  Omar Mateen was born in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents and raised Muslim. He lived in an apartment complex in Fort Pierce, Florida, 117 miles from the club. From October 2006 until April 2007, he trained as a prison guard. He was let go after joking about bringing a gun to school. He later failed to become a state trooper in 2011, and was not admitted to a police academy in 2015. Since 2007 he had worked as a security guard for G4S Secure Solutions, held a firearms license, and had no criminal record.

  His first marriage, in 2009, ended after a few months. His ex-wife later called him mentally unstable and physically abusive, and said he had used steroids. His autopsy showed signs of long-term steroid use, though investigators remained unsure whether it played any part. At the time of the attack he was married to his second wife and had a young son. He had bought the rifle on the 4th of June and the pistol on the 5th, both legally, from a shop in Port St. Lucie.

  Mateen's own words pointed to the wars abroad. On the 911 call he said the killing of Abu Waheeb, an Islamic State commander, had triggered the attack. A US airstrike hit Abu Waheeb's vehicle in Rutba, Iraq, on the 6th of May 2016, and killed three others. Hours before the shooting, Mateen posted on Facebook, "You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes. Now taste the Islamic state vengeance."

  Whether Pulse was chosen because it was a gay club remains disputed. The FBI could not verify reports that Mateen was gay or visited gay bars. Agents found no photographs, text messages, apps or cell tower data to suggest it. His father first said he had seen his son grow angry at the sight of two men kissing in Miami, then said he did not believe his son was gay. His ex-wife's fiancé said her family believed otherwise.

  The clearest evidence came out at his wife's trial in 2018. Her defense said Mateen had searched "downtown Orlando nightclubs" and passed Disney Springs. He then drove between Pulse and the Eve Orlando Nightclub. Phone records suggested he settled on Pulse because of its lack of security, and witnesses said the choice came at the last minute. As one account put it, the full picture "may never be known" because Mateen died in the shootout and left no manifesto.

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• 7. What Investigators Found

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  The FBI had looked at Mateen twice before. In May 2013, a case opened after he told coworkers he had links to Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, and to the Fort Hood and Boston Marathon attackers. Mateen later said he made the claims after constant taunting from sheriff's deputies and G4S coworkers. The FBI tracked his routine, examined his phone records, and used two informants to record his conversations. He was interviewed twice, and the case closed because "there was just nothing there." A second inquiry opened in 2014 over his link to Abu Salha. It, too, found nothing. Asked whether the FBI should have acted differently, Director James Comey answered, "So far, the honest answer is, 'I don't think so.'"

  No link to the Islamic State was ever found. The group's Amaq News Agency claimed the attack on the day itself, and the Iraqi IS radio station al-Bayan called Mateen a soldier of the caliphate. CIA Director John Brennan told senators that his agency was "unable to uncover any link." Comey said investigators saw no sign of a plot directed from abroad and believed Mateen was radicalized at least partly online. Officials treated it as terrorism.

  In January 2017, federal agents arrested Mateen's widow, Noor Salman, at her home in Rodeo, California. She was charged with aiding and abetting and with obstruction of justice. At her trial in March 2018, prosecutors admitted that her confession to scouting targets was false according to phone evidence. They also revealed that Mateen's father, Seddique Mateen, had been an FBI informant at various points between January 2005 and June 2016. On the 30th of March, the jury acquitted her of both charges. The jury foreman said, "we were convinced she did know" that some attack was planned.

  Police conduct drew scrutiny too. Two former SWAT members questioned the long delay before the breach. A Justice Department review by the Police Foundation, released in December 2017, found the Orlando response appropriate and consistent with national guidelines. It also said the department's tactics were strained once the suspect claimed to have bombs. Chief Mina's own presentation to police groups described 500 interviews, 1,600 leads and more than 950 pieces of evidence.

  In September 2016, Florida fined G4S Secure Solutions $151,400 for inaccurate psychological testing information on more than 1,500 forms over ten years. Mateen's form was among those examined.

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• 8. Grief, Giving, and a Memorial

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  During the attack, 603 calls were made to 911, and the fight over them lasted months. On the 14th of June 2016, two dozen news agencies demanded the recordings, and Orlando police refused. Releases came in pieces through the summer and autumn. By the 18th of November, the city said every call had been made public. Judges had ruled some too graphic for audio, so 107 pages of transcripts of more than 30 calls came out in written form.

  Facebook turned on its Safety Check feature around Orlando, its first use in the United States. Lines formed at blood centers after OneBlood made an appeal. The surge drew attention to a federal rule barring men who had sex with men in the past year from donating. The FDA said on the 14th of June that it had no plans to change it. Some Muslim groups urged members to break their Ramadan fast to give blood.

  The Orlando Family Assistance Center opened on the 15th of June inside Camping World Stadium. In eight days, it helped 956 people from 298 families. Both hospitals that treated the wounded said they would not bill survivors, and the city offered free plots and funeral services at Greenwood Cemetery.

  Equality Florida's fundraising page raised $767,000 in its first nine hours. By the 22nd of September, it had passed $7.85 million, a record for GoFundMe. Mayor Buddy Dyer's OneOrlando fund reached $23 million by the 12th of August, helped by $1 million each from Disney and NBCUniversal. By the 1st of December, it had paid over $27.4 million to 299 recipients. A graphic novel called Love Is Love raised more than $165,000.

  On the 19th of June, about 50,000 people gathered at Lake Eola Park for a vigil. One World Trade Center and the Sydney Harbour Bridge glowed in rainbow colors. Ambassador Samantha Power led 17 UN ambassadors to the Stonewall Inn. On the 22nd of June, sixty House Democrats staged a sit-in over gun control, which did not force a vote.

  The building itself stayed contested. In December 2016, its owner refused the city's offer of $2.25 million and formed the OnePulse Foundation. The foundation raised $20 million but folded without building a memorial, and the city bought the site after October 2023. On the 18th of March 2026, the building was demolished to make way for a $12 million permanent memorial planned to open in 2027. The Pulse sign was kept in storage, waiting for its place in that memorial.

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