Omar Mateen

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen (born Omar Mir Seddique; November 16, 1986 – June 12, 2016) was an American mass murderer and domestic terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 58 others, 53 of them by gunfire in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed in a shootout with the local police. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history until it was surpassed by the Las Vegas Strip shooting on October 1, 2017, and it is the deadliest known incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history. Born in New York to Afghan-American parents, he moved to Florida as a child, where he displayed an interest in violence and had behavioral problems in school, including struggling academically and receiving numerous suspensions. As an adult, he drifted through various jobs and a failed marriage before eventually becoming an armed G4S security guard. Before the shooting, he had been investigated for connections to terrorism by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013 and 2014. During that period, he was placed on the Terrorist Screening Database, but was subsequently removed. In a call to 911 during the shooting, Mateen identified himself as "Mujahideen", "Islamic Soldier", and "Soldier of God"; and pledged his allegiance multiple times to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who at the time was the leader of the militant jihadist group, the Islamic State. He said the shooting was "triggered" by an airstrike in Iraq that killed Abu Waheeb, an IS commander, six weeks before.