Zirkle said he and other students warned Mateen that he needed to stop.

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Mateen, he said, attended Spectrum Alternative School, a separate public school. He had people who were cordial with him or would ask him how he was doing.

Only a few people spoke to him. I was one of the few who would. The White House announced that President Obama would travel to Orlando on Thursday "to pay his respects to victims' families and to stand in solidarity with the community. As of midday Monday, all but two of the 49 slain victims had been publicly identified after notification of their families.

They were mostly Latino men. This is the heart of her downtown district. She and other officials have asked residents to hold off on staging a vigil until all the victims are identified. Mina outlined the police response during a Monday briefing near the nightclub, flanked by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Dyer, federal investigators and prosecutors.

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The shooting was reported at 2: Sunday when an off-duty Orlando police officer at the club initially confronted Mateen near an entrance and the two engaged in a gun battle, Mina said. When more police responded, additional officers entered the club and traded fire with the gunman. Mateen holed up with four to five hostages in a bathroom, while 15 to 20 more people were trapped in another bathroom nearby, Mina said. That's when police backed off. A team of negotiators arrived and began communicating with Mateen, who sounded "cool and calm," Mina said.

Mina would not say whether Mateen appeared to be on a suicide mission. But police kept talking to him and shortly before 5 a. Officials decided to enter the building, Mina said, because, "there was a timeline given [by Mateen] and we believed there was an imminent loss of life. Police made an "explosive breach" into the building, then used an armored BearCat vehicle to punch a hole about 2 square feet in the wall so that dozens could escape, Mina said.

Mateen also emerged from the hole, armed with a long gun and handgun, and confronted SWAT officers backed against a wall who returned fire, killing him, Mina said. The police chief said Mateen did not shoot between the time he retreated to the bathroom and when police breached the building.

Mina defended the decision to wait and attempt to negotiate with the shooter before police finally forced their way into the building. It was a hard decision to make. We believe it was the right thing to do. We believe we saved many, many lives. Mateen bought both of the guns used in the attack, and a third weapon was recovered from Mateen's car, said Regina Lombardo, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Officials would not identify the weapon found in the car or say whether any explosives were recovered from the scene. Mateen bought his guns at the St. Lucie Shooting Center, owner Ed Henson told reporters in a televised news conference. Henson said Mateen was "familiar to me vaguely.

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I don't know him personally. President Obama said Monday that Mateen appeared to be "inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet" but that investigators had found no evidence he was working with outside groups. Islamic State proclaimed him as a member of the group through a media affiliate after the shooting. FBI agents closed their investigation into Mateen after concluding that he didn't understand how Al Qaeda operated and had not committed a crime.

He told investigators that he had been lying and blustering about his terrorist ties. During the investigation, Mateen was placed on the FBI's terrorist screening database, an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an investigation. Mateen was removed from that database after the bureau closed its investigation into him, an official said. In , agents again questioned Mateen after learning he had attended the same mosque as Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American who later joined Islamic State and was killed in Syria.

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The FBI "determined that contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or a threat at that time," Ronald Hopper, an FBI official, told reporters in Orlando. Some who knew the gunman described him as a practicing Muslim who spewed homophobic and racist slurs. But it still wasn't clear Monday what motivated Mateen to attack the nightclub.

His father, Seddique Mateen, hosts a show on the satellite network Payam-e-Afghan TV about the national politics of his homeland. In new video posted on Facebook early Monday, he calls his son well-educated and respectful to his parents, saying that he was "not aware what complexities he had in his heart, and what caused him to go to this gay and lesbian club and shoot 50 people," he said in Dari, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. Seddique Mateen said he was saddened by his son's actions.

But he added: What he did was completely an act of terrorism. Mateen, a U. I condemn what he did. I wish I didn't know that [is] what he was doing.

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If I could catch him, I would could ask him myself. The only thing I'll say is those people who lost their loved ones, they are my family. I apologize for what my son did, and I am as sad and as mad as you guys are.



You are my family. I would have called the FBI. I would have called the local law enforcement.

Orlando killer left message on Facebook before attack

Mustafa Abasin, Mateen's brother-in-law, stood in the doorway of his pastel pink, three-bedroom home in Port St. Lucie, a city close to Fort Pierce, about miles south of Orlando, still struggling to make sense of what had happened.



I'm not awake. It's unbelievable. It wasn't him. He says Mateen used Adam4Adam to send shots of his penis to men -- but never showed his face. Cedeno says he has no knowledge Mateen was ever successful in hooking up with a man. On the other hand She says he was "nice, normal She told us Mateen never said anything about being into men , but did rant about Islam and the Quran She says he wanted to meet face-to-face, but she too blocked him because he seemed "emotionally unstable.

The FBI says it's investigating Mateen's potential activity on gay apps, and reports he'd visited Pulse multiple times before Sunday morning's killings. Got A Tip? Email Or Call