When Omar Mateen met his father the day before he killed 49 people in a siege of a gay nightclub, he betrayed nothing of the rage that would erupt into the worst mass shooting in modern American histo
When Omar Mateen met his father the day before he killed 49 people in a siege of a gay nightclub, he betrayed nothing of the rage that would erupt into the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
“I didn’t notice anything wrong,” Seddique Mateen said in an interview. “He was very slick.”
More details emerged on Monday about the killer, his devotion to Islam and the circumstances of his 2 am Sunday rampage inside an Orlando, Florida nightclub.
At the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, a mosque he attended for nearly a decade, Mateen occasionally prayed with Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American who in 2014 became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, although they “did not interact with each other,” said Adel Nefzi, a mosque board member.
In 2014, when Mateen was investigated and interviewed for a second time in two years by US authorities, it was because of suspected connections to Abu-Salha. That was not enough to “constitute a substantive threat” at that time, US authorities said on Sunday.
The two also attended the same school, Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, the southeast Florida city where Mateen also lived. Mateen graduated in 2006 with a degree in criminal justice, while Abu-Salha was enrolled in the fall 2010 and spring 2011, according to school officials.
In Fort Pierce’s close-knit Muslim community of about 100 families, Mateen was known as quiet with few friends.
“He wasn’t a people person. He was not extremely friendly but he wasn’t rude either,” said Mohammed Jameel (54) who worshipped at his mosque.
A neighbour in Mateen’s condominium complex described him as “awkward”.
