These images show inside the home of the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida.
Omar Mateen, 29, appears to have acted alone, without direction from the various Islamist militant groups he professed sympathy for, according to authorities.
Pictures from inside his home – Apartment 107 at the Woodland Condominium in Fort Pierce – give a look at the everyday life of the worst mass gunman in modern U.S. history. The walls and fridge are decorated with pictures of Mateen’s three-year-old son.
There are paintings and toys including a Minion balloon, and cuddly toys from Frozen and Star Wars.
His son’s bedroom also has a poster up which reads: ‘Be someone someone you would be proud to know.’
It’s believed that the terrorist lived in this property since he was married to his first wife. Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, described him as mentally unstable, ‘bipolar’ and violent.
‘He would get mad out of nowhere. That’s when I started worrying about my safety, and then after a few months he started abusing me physically very often,’ she told reporters.
The couple split in 2009 after just four months of marriage. Yusufiy said her former spouse applied to a police academy and worked for a time as a corrections officer at a juvenile detention center.
Mateen graduated in 2006 from Indian River State College in Fort Pierce with a degree in criminal justice. President Barack Obama called Mateen, a New York-born U.S. citizen and son of Afghan immigrants, an apparent example of ‘homegrown extremism’.
At the same time, a portrait of Mateen emerged of a troubled loner who harbored a fierce temper and violent streak, as well as aspirations for a career in law enforcement.
Homophobe Mateen was shot dead by police who stormed the Pulse nightclub in Orlando before dawn on Sunday, ending a bloody three-hour siege that began when the killer burst into the venue and opened fire with an assault-style rifle and handgun.
The carnage unfolded during a Latin music night at the club, which was crowded with more than 300 patrons. Many of the 49 people killed were Hispanic, more than half of them of Puerto Rican origin.
Fifty-three people were wounded. During his rampage, Mateen placed a series of calls to 911 to pledge loyalty to the leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
He also claimed solidarity in those calls with the Chechen brothers who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and with a Palestinian-American who became a suicide bomber in Syria for the al Qaeda offshoot known as the Nusra Front, authorities said.
Mateen was interviewed in 2013 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after co-workers reported that he had made claims of family connections to al Qaeda and membership in the Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah.
However, following a search of his property and further inquiries, federal investigators found no evidence connecting him to militant groups, said FBI Director James Comey. Early findings in the Orlando investigation point to self-radicalisation. See more photos below....
- DailyMail/Metro
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