Omar Mir Seddique Mateen (November 16, 1986 – June 12, 2016) was an
American mass murderer and domestic Islamic terrorist, who was of Afghan descent. He killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida. He was killed in a shootout with the police.
Prior to the shooting, he had been investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014. Mateen reportedly pledged his allegiance to the Sunni militant jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as well as the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian al-Qaeda branch and opponent of ISIL, before the shooting.
Mateen was born Omar Mir Seddique on November 16, 1986 in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents. His father, Mir Seddique Mateen, is a Pashtun who emigrated in the 1980s and is an alleged supporter of the Taliban. After being raised in New York for a few years, he moved with his family to Port St. Lucie in 1991. His family was described as being moderate Muslims and "an all-American family".
At a young age, Mateen displayed his sexuality and an interest in violence. For his elementary and middle school education, he attended classes in St. Lucie County, Florida. At Mariposa Elementary, a third grade teacher described Mateen as "very active … constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive ... much talk about violence & sex ... hands all over the place – on other children, in his mouth". In the seventh grade, Mateen was moved to a separate class with the purpose of avoiding "conflicts with other students" and suffered from poor scholarly performance due to "many instances of behavioral problems". A fellow classmate of Mateen at Mariposa said that Mateen was a bully and disrespectful to girls while also acting like he was better than his classmates. His parents were described as "dismissive" of his poor behavior while his father "had a reputation for being disrespectful of female teachers and dismissive of complaints about his son". In 1999 while Mateen was in the eighth grade, a letter sent from Mateen's teacher to his father noted an "attitude and inability to show self-control".
Mateen began his secondary education at Martin County High School in 2000 and at the age of fourteen was expelled after being in a fight in math class, where he was briefly arrested without being handcuffed and charged with battery and disrupting school, though the charges were later dropped by the school. While a sophomore attending Spectrum, an alternative high school for those that have issues with their behavior, classmates told The Washington Post that Mateen cheered in support of the hijackers during the September 11 attacks and that he stated that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who taught him how to shoot AK-47s, all of this prior to the knowledge of bin Laden being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. After his outburst, Mateen's father arrived to the school to pick him up and slapped him in the face, with Mateen later being suspended for five days after the incident. Soon after the September 11 attacks, repeatedly "he shocked other students on his school bus by imitating an exploding plane", reported the New York Times. A retired dean of Martin County High School, Dan Alley, stated that "We tried to counsel him and show him the error of his ways, but it never had the effect that we were hoping for" and that his father "would not back up the school, and he would always take his son’s side". Mateen was later sent to St. Lucie West Centennial High School after getting into a fight with a student, with one schoolmate reported that Mateen was bullied at the school. By the time Mateen had returned and graduated from Martin County's Stuart Adult Vocational School in 2003, he had been suspended for 48 days for being involved in fights and injuring other students.
In 2006, Mateen filed a petition for a name change, adding Mateen as his surname to match that of his parents.
The same year, he registered to vote as a member of the Democratic Party.
In April 2009, Mateen married an Uzbekistan-born woman, Sitora Yusifiy, whom he met in 2008 through Myspace, a social networking site. They separated after four months and divorced in July 2011.
Mateen visited Saudi Arabia for an eight-day trip in 2011 and a ten-day trip in 2012. The latter was organized by the Islamic Center at New York University. It included twelve New York City police officers and groups from Columbia and Yale and visited Mecca and Medina. Around these times, he went to the United Arab Emirates. FBI Director James Comey said Saudi officials helped investigate Mateen's trips. In addition, House Intelligence Committee said that U.S. investigators "are searching for details about the Saudi Arabia trips."
Noor Salman, Mateen's second wife, was listed as Mateen’s spouse on a September 2013 St. Lucie County mortgage document. She had moved into Mateen's Fort Pierce home in November 2012.By September 2013, they were living in a house in Port St. Lucie with Mateen's father and another relative. Salman left Mateen and joined relatives in Rodeo, California, by December 2015. At the time of his death, Mateen had a three-year-old son with Salman.
At the time of the shooting, he lived about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Orlando, Florida, in Fort Pierce, but received mail at his parents' home in nearby Port St. Lucie. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records, he had no criminal record in Florida.
NBC News reported that Noor Salman, Mateen's second wife, told the FBI she "drove him once to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out". An official involved with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities believed Salman knew about the plot beforehand, but were reluctant to charge her based only on this suspicion. Days prior to the event, Salman had accompanied Mateen on a trip to buy ammunition and warned him the evening prior to the event against anything he might be planning.
A month before the attack, Mateen donated blood at OneBlood, a regional blood donation agency, which would later donate a majority of its supply to injured victims.
Hours before the attack, Mateen stopped by his parents' home to visit his father, who said he did not notice anything strange about his son during the visit.
ABC News and Fox News reported that on the early morning of June 12, the day of the attack, Mateen posted on one of his Facebook accounts: "The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west ... You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance" as well as "America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state." His final post to Facebook was "In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic State in the usa." These posts, since deleted, were uncovered by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
At approximately 2:00 a.m. on June 12, 2016, Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and began shooting. At 2:22 a.m., he made a 9-1-1 call in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL; referenced Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers; and mentioned Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an acquaintance of his who died in a suicide bombing in Syria for the Al-Nusra Front in 2014. According to FBI officials, Mateen made two other 9-1-1 calls during the shooting. He also called News 13 of Orlando and identified himself as the nightclub shooter; The Washington Post reported that "he had carried out the Pulse attack for the Islamic State".
Mateen took hostages after police arrived and engaged in a gunfight with him. At approximately 5:00 a.m. police shot and killed Mateen, ending the attack. A total of 49 people were left dead along with Mateen and 53 others were injured. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in United States history, the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history the largest targeted mass killing of LGBT people in the Western world since the Holocaust, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since September 11, 2001.
Prior to the shooting, he had been investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014. Mateen reportedly pledged his allegiance to the Sunni militant jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as well as the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian al-Qaeda branch and opponent of ISIL, before the shooting.
Mateen was born Omar Mir Seddique on November 16, 1986 in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents. His father, Mir Seddique Mateen, is a Pashtun who emigrated in the 1980s and is an alleged supporter of the Taliban. After being raised in New York for a few years, he moved with his family to Port St. Lucie in 1991. His family was described as being moderate Muslims and "an all-American family".
At a young age, Mateen displayed his sexuality and an interest in violence. For his elementary and middle school education, he attended classes in St. Lucie County, Florida. At Mariposa Elementary, a third grade teacher described Mateen as "very active … constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive ... much talk about violence & sex ... hands all over the place – on other children, in his mouth". In the seventh grade, Mateen was moved to a separate class with the purpose of avoiding "conflicts with other students" and suffered from poor scholarly performance due to "many instances of behavioral problems". A fellow classmate of Mateen at Mariposa said that Mateen was a bully and disrespectful to girls while also acting like he was better than his classmates. His parents were described as "dismissive" of his poor behavior while his father "had a reputation for being disrespectful of female teachers and dismissive of complaints about his son". In 1999 while Mateen was in the eighth grade, a letter sent from Mateen's teacher to his father noted an "attitude and inability to show self-control".
Mateen began his secondary education at Martin County High School in 2000 and at the age of fourteen was expelled after being in a fight in math class, where he was briefly arrested without being handcuffed and charged with battery and disrupting school, though the charges were later dropped by the school. While a sophomore attending Spectrum, an alternative high school for those that have issues with their behavior, classmates told The Washington Post that Mateen cheered in support of the hijackers during the September 11 attacks and that he stated that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who taught him how to shoot AK-47s, all of this prior to the knowledge of bin Laden being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. After his outburst, Mateen's father arrived to the school to pick him up and slapped him in the face, with Mateen later being suspended for five days after the incident. Soon after the September 11 attacks, repeatedly "he shocked other students on his school bus by imitating an exploding plane", reported the New York Times. A retired dean of Martin County High School, Dan Alley, stated that "We tried to counsel him and show him the error of his ways, but it never had the effect that we were hoping for" and that his father "would not back up the school, and he would always take his son’s side". Mateen was later sent to St. Lucie West Centennial High School after getting into a fight with a student, with one schoolmate reported that Mateen was bullied at the school. By the time Mateen had returned and graduated from Martin County's Stuart Adult Vocational School in 2003, he had been suspended for 48 days for being involved in fights and injuring other students.
In 2006, Mateen filed a petition for a name change, adding Mateen as his surname to match that of his parents.
The same year, he registered to vote as a member of the Democratic Party.
In April 2009, Mateen married an Uzbekistan-born woman, Sitora Yusifiy, whom he met in 2008 through Myspace, a social networking site. They separated after four months and divorced in July 2011.
Mateen visited Saudi Arabia for an eight-day trip in 2011 and a ten-day trip in 2012. The latter was organized by the Islamic Center at New York University. It included twelve New York City police officers and groups from Columbia and Yale and visited Mecca and Medina. Around these times, he went to the United Arab Emirates. FBI Director James Comey said Saudi officials helped investigate Mateen's trips. In addition, House Intelligence Committee said that U.S. investigators "are searching for details about the Saudi Arabia trips."
Noor Salman, Mateen's second wife, was listed as Mateen’s spouse on a September 2013 St. Lucie County mortgage document. She had moved into Mateen's Fort Pierce home in November 2012.By September 2013, they were living in a house in Port St. Lucie with Mateen's father and another relative. Salman left Mateen and joined relatives in Rodeo, California, by December 2015. At the time of his death, Mateen had a three-year-old son with Salman.
At the time of the shooting, he lived about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Orlando, Florida, in Fort Pierce, but received mail at his parents' home in nearby Port St. Lucie. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records, he had no criminal record in Florida.
NBC News reported that Noor Salman, Mateen's second wife, told the FBI she "drove him once to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out". An official involved with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities believed Salman knew about the plot beforehand, but were reluctant to charge her based only on this suspicion. Days prior to the event, Salman had accompanied Mateen on a trip to buy ammunition and warned him the evening prior to the event against anything he might be planning.
A month before the attack, Mateen donated blood at OneBlood, a regional blood donation agency, which would later donate a majority of its supply to injured victims.
Hours before the attack, Mateen stopped by his parents' home to visit his father, who said he did not notice anything strange about his son during the visit.
ABC News and Fox News reported that on the early morning of June 12, the day of the attack, Mateen posted on one of his Facebook accounts: "The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west ... You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes..now taste the Islamic state vengeance" as well as "America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state." His final post to Facebook was "In the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic State in the usa." These posts, since deleted, were uncovered by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
At approximately 2:00 a.m. on June 12, 2016, Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and began shooting. At 2:22 a.m., he made a 9-1-1 call in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL; referenced Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers; and mentioned Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an acquaintance of his who died in a suicide bombing in Syria for the Al-Nusra Front in 2014. According to FBI officials, Mateen made two other 9-1-1 calls during the shooting. He also called News 13 of Orlando and identified himself as the nightclub shooter; The Washington Post reported that "he had carried out the Pulse attack for the Islamic State".
Mateen took hostages after police arrived and engaged in a gunfight with him. At approximately 5:00 a.m. police shot and killed Mateen, ending the attack. A total of 49 people were left dead along with Mateen and 53 others were injured. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in United States history, the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history the largest targeted mass killing of LGBT people in the Western world since the Holocaust, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since September 11, 2001.
