Distraught family members waited to hear about their loved ones as officials began identifying victims from Sunday's early-morning massacre at an Orlando gay nightclub — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
By sunrise, at least 50 people were dead and 53 more were hurt.
Witnesses described terror-filled moments.
A DJ hid behind his booth. Loved ones got separated from each other as they sprinted away from the club so fast their shoes fell off. People carried bloodied strangers, suffering from gunshot wounds, to ambulances waiting nearby.
The gunfire, which erupted about 2 a.m. at Pulse nightclub, lasted for the duration of one song, a witness said.
The gunman, who was killed in a shootout with police about 5 a.m., was identified by the FBI as Omar Mateen of St. Lucie County. The agency interviewed Mateen, 29, three times in 2013 and 2014 for expressing ties to terrorist organizations and contacting a suicide bomber, but they determined he wasn't a threat.
The gunman who killed 50 people at a Florida nightclub was emotionally and mentally disturbed with a violent temper, yet aspired to be a police officer, his ex-wife says.
Sitora Yusufiy, the former spouse of Mateen, also told reporters in a news conference aired on CNN that she was “rescued” by family members from her husband after four months of a stormy marriage that ended in divorce. “He was mentally unstable and mentally ill,” Yusufiy said.
Although records show the couple didn’t divorce for two years after the marriage, Yusiufiy said she was actually only with Mateen for four months because he was abusive. She said he would not let her speak to her family and that family members had to come and literally pull her out of his arms. Yusufiy said she was “devastated, shocked, started shaking and crying” when she heard about the shooting, but she attributed the violence to Mateen’s mental illness, not any alliance with terrorist groups.
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