Authorities said Omar Mateen, 29, pledged his allegiance to Islamic State on a 911 call shortly before killing at least 50 people and wounding 53 at the Pulse club early Sunday morning in the deadliest mass shooting in American history. After the shooting, a statement attributed to Islamic State's news agency, Amaq, said the attack "was carried out by an Islamic State fighter."
However, his ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, told reporters that she believed Mateen was mentally ill and that his emotional problems may have had more to do with the attack than any political or religious allegiance. In a televised news conference, Yusufiy said she and Mateen were together for only about four months, during which he physically abused her, and that she hadn't spoken with him in seven years.
While not speculating on the motive, top Florida and national figures, including President Obama, called the attack a clear act of terror -- the deadliest on American soil since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The attack came during LGBT Pride month, when celebrations are being held in cities around the country, including West Hollywood, and will go down as the deadliest attack on LGBT people in the nation's history.
Authorities in Santa Monica found possible explosives as well as assault rifles and ammunition Sunday in the car of a man who told them he was in town for the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, a law enforcement source said. The FBI is investigating.
The Orlando gunman targeted a venue packed with about 320 clubgoers who were so absorbed in the party that some witnesses mistook the opening gunshots about 2 a.m. as part of the music.
Rosie Feba said she took her girlfriend to the club for the first time Saturday night. It was near closing time when the shooting began.
"She told me someone was shooting. Everyone was getting on the floor," Feba said. "I told her I didn't think it was real, I thought it was just part of the music, until I saw fire coming out of his gun."
Feba and her girlfriend ran out of the club. On the way out, they saw a man who had been shot. Feba grabbed him. Others around her called 911. Some of the man's blood stained the sleeve of her striped T-shirt. Feba and her girlfriend were unharmed but shaken.
Mateen, who was born in New York, had been living in the Fort Pierce, Fla., area and worked as a private security guard, was killed by a SWAT team three hours after taking hostages at Pulse. Federal investigators said they were looking into reports that he recited Islamic prayers during the attack.
The investigators emphasized that they had just begun digging into his background and didn't want to jump to conclusions about any links to Islamic State. Federal investigators believe his parents are from Afghanistan.
Mateen's father hosted a TV show on a Canoga Park-based satellite network aimed at Afghan exiles. He told NBC News that his son was angered when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago.
"We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry," Mir Seddique said. "They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, 'Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.' And then we were in the men's bathroom and men were kissing each other.
"We are apologizing for the whole incident," he added.
Mateen was placed on a terrorist watch list maintained by the FBI when its agents questioned him in 2013 and 2014 about potential ties to terrorism, according to U.S. law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case.
He was subsequently removed from that database after the FBI closed its two investigations, one official said.
Ronald Hopper, assistant special agent in charge of the bureau's Orlando office, also cited the 2013 and 2014 sessions at a news conference Sunday afternoon. He said they "turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going."
Hopper said the 2013 interviews resulted from inflammatory remarks Mateen made to co-workers "alleging possible ties to terrorists," but the investigation was closed without charges. FBI agents questioned Mateen in 2014 about potential ties to an American suicide bomber, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who blew himself up in Syria that year.
The contacts between Mateen and Abusalha, the first American suicide bomber known to have died in Syria, were minimal, Hopper said. The interviews of Mateen were inconclusive and the investigation was closed.
Mateen was not currently under investigation by the FBI and was not being watched by agents, FBI officials said. It could not be determined whether Mateen was on a terrorist watch list, as reported earlier by some news organizations.
An official of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, told reporters that officials had traced Mateen's long gun and handgun to purchases made "within the last week or so."
"It appears he was organized and well prepared," Orlando Police Chief John Mina said, adding that the gunman was not from the Orlando area.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott told reporters that the shooting "was clearly an act of terror."
President Obama similarly called it "an act of terror and hate," and said that, "as Americans, we are united in grief and in outrage and in resolve to defend our people."
"As a country, we'll be there for the people of Orlando, today, tomorrow and for all the days to come," the president said in a somber, nationally televised address. He said it was "a sobering reminder that attacks on any Americans, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, is an attack on all of us."
Obama met earlier Sunday with FBI Director James B. Comey and other top national security officials and said investigators did not yet have a "definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer."
Obama used the moment to make a plea for tougher regulations on gun sales. The shooter was armed with a handgun and a "powerful assault rifle," Obama said.
"This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well," he said.
Obama ordered that flags on public buildings around the country be flown at half-staff until sunset Thursday. Hillary Clinton's campaign announced that, because of the shooting, she and Obama were canceling a joint campaign appearance Tuesday.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, issued a statement excoriating Obama and Clinton for failing to use the term "radical Islam" in discussing the shooting.
In the wake of the deadly shooting, Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson canceled high-level meetings in Beijing this week about reducing cybersecurity attacks against U.S. businesses, among other topics.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), noted similarities to the November attack on the Bataclan nightclub in Paris and said in a statement that intelligence officers are combing through terrorism databases to see whether there are any known links between the shooter and a terrorist group. There haven't been signs so far that Islamic State leaders helped orchestrate the plot, he said.
No other American mass shooting comes close to the lives lost in Orlando. Not at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 people died in 1999; nor in Newtown, Conn., where 26 people were killed in 2012; nor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., where 32 people were killed in 2007.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer declared a state of emergency in the city, and the governor declared a state of emergency in the surrounding county. Medical officials said that many of the 53 wounded were "critically" injured.
"Many of the gunshot wounds were fairly severe," said Dr. Michael Cheatham, chief surgical quality officer at Orlando Regional Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center. "Many trunk, abdomen and extreme gunshot wounds. Our operating room has been quite busy all day long with those injuries."
The city of Orlando began to identify the dead on Sunday afternoon.
"Just to look in the eyes of our officers told the whole story," Mina told reporters. "You could tell that they were all shaken by the incident, by what they saw in the club."
Witnesses said they heard at least 40 shots, and one witness said the shooting lasted the length of an entire song. As bullets tore through the crowd, men and women took cover by dropping to the floor and crawling for cover. Some apparently hid in the restrooms, including one man whose texts to his mother were broadcast over WFTV-TV:
"Mommy I love you"
"In club they shooting"
"He's coming"
"I'm gonna die"
"He's in the bathroom with us"
The fate of the young man, who was not identified by the station, was not immediately known. Just after the shooting, Pulse posted a note to its Web page that said, "Everyone get out of Pulse and keep running."
Officials said the gunman initially traded gunfire with an Orlando police officer who was working as a security guard at the club. The gunman retreated into the club and held hostages there for about three hours.
Dozens of emergency vehicles surrounded the scene as dazed men and women, some wounded, escaped from the area. The Orlando Fire Department called its bomb squad and hazardous material team to the scene after 3 a.m. Emergency workers were seen taking victims away from the scene in large trucks; in one case, an emergency worker was doing chest compressions on one of the victims.
After 5 a.m., a SWAT team decided to move in, and the gunman shot an officer in the helmet before the team shot and killed him, Mina said, adding that the officer's helmet appeared to save his life, and he suffered only an eye injury.
Eleven officers were involved in the shooting. Following normal protocol, they were suspended from active duty and are expected to be identified within a couple days.
Javer Antonetti, 53, went to the club with his brother and was toward the back of the room when shots ring out. "There were so many, at least 40," he said. "It was constant, like 'pow, pow, pow.' "
He ran, but his brother, who was on crutches, was stuck inside until police rescued him unharmed. After Antonetti escaped, he noticed he had blood smears on his shirt. He said he doesn't know how they got there.
News of the shooting spread quickly over social media as friends around and outside Florida tried to reach their acquaintances in Orlando to see if they were OK.
"One of my friends was shot and another is missing. I'm just sitting here shaking," tweeted Joshua Yehl, the editor of IGN Comics in Los Angeles, who said he's from Orlando. He added shortly afterward: "Just saw my best friend's mom on the news, crying that her son went to Pulse and is now missing, and his bf was shot multiple times."
Footage uploaded to a Facebook page belonging to Anthony Torres showed emergency responders treating several victims in a triage area that had been set up in the street. In another video, emergency workers appeared to be loading a victim into the back of an ambulance.
"They are just pulling people out in stretchers loading them up," said a caption to the video. "Omg please god let everyone make it -- tonight was supposed to be a fun night!! One more minute and we would of been shot or worse.. Thank god we got to our car in time."
In Fort Pierce, Fla., near where the gunman is believed to have lived, police spokesman Ed Cunningham said police and the FBI evacuated dozens of people from the Woodland condo complex and were standing guard outside. He would not say whether there were any incidents at the condo complex, whether police seized evidence or arrested anyone.
FBI agents also searched Mateen's parents' home in Port St. Lucie, a bedroom community of West Palm Beach.
The shooting came two nights after a brazen shooting at a different music venue in Orlando. On Friday night, singer Christina Grimmie was fatally shot as she signed autographs after performing at the Plaza Live theater in Orlando. Grimmie had gained fame as a YouTube performer and a contestant on "The Voice."
Pearce reported from Los Angeles and Wilber from Washington. Also contributing to this report was the staff of the Orlando Sentinel; Times staff writers Brian Bennett in Washington and Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston; and the Associated Press.
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