ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded Florida nightclub early Sunday, killing at least 50 people in the worst mass shooting in American history before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said.
Authorities were investigating it as an act of terrorism.
At least 53 other people were hospitalized, most in critical condition, officials said.
“I think we will see the death toll rise,” said Dr. Mike Cheatham a trauma surgeon at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said all of the dead were killed with the assault rifle.
“There’s blood everywhere,” Dyer said.
The suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the gay club known as Pulse around 2 a.m., when more than 300 people were inside. The gunman then went back inside and took hostages, Police Chief John Mina said.
Around 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages. Police have not determined an exact number of casualties, but Mina said “approximately 20” bodies were inside the club.
In addition to the guns, the shooter also had some sort of “suspicious device,” Mina said.
Authorities were looking into whether the attack was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter acted alone, according to Danny Banks, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“This is an incident, as I see it, that we certainly classify as domestic terror incident,” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.
The suspect was identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Rep. Alan Grayson named the shooter, citing law enforcement officials. A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation also confirmed the name. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
FBI agent Ron Hopper said there was no further threat to Orlando or the surrounding area.
When asked if the gunman had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, Hopper said authorities had “suggestions that individual has leanings towards that.”
Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a “controlled explosion” at the scene of the shooting. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.
A woman who was outside the dance club early Sunday was trying to contact her 30-year-old son, Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: “He’s coming.”
“The next text said: ‘He has us, and he’s in here with us,'” Mina Justice said. “That was the last conversation.”
Dozens of police vehicles swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.
Pulse posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.” Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: “As soon as we have any information, we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.”
Local, state and federal agencies were investigating.
President Barack Obama was briefed on the attack and has asked for regular updates on the investigation, the White House said.
The attack follows the fatal shooting late Friday of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed after her concert in Orlando by a 27-year-old Florida man who later killed himself. Grimmie was a YouTube sensation and former contestant on “The Voice.”
Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club’s rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.
“I heard 20, 40, 50 shots,” Alamo said. “The music stopped.”
Club-goer Rob Rick said the shooting started just before closing time.
“Everybody was drinking their last sip,” he said.
He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.
Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he heard gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged and police urged people to back away from the club. He saw the wounded being tended to across the street.
“I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?’ So I just dropped down. I just said, ‘Please, please, please, I want to make it out,'” he said. “And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don’t get shot.”
Click on photo to enlarge it, then use your left-right arrow keys to cycle through the gallery.
Jermaine Towns, left, and Brandon Shuford wait down the street from a multiple shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. Towns said his brother was in the club at the time. A gunman opened fire at a nightclub in central Florida, and multiple people have been wounded, police said Sunday. Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, center right, and Orlando Police Chief John Mina, center left, arrive to a news conference after a fatal shooting at Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack) Bystanders wait down the street from a multiple shooting at the Pulse nightclub. A gunman opened fire at a nightclub in central Florida, and multiple people have been wounded, police said Sunday. Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Police cars surround the Pulse Orlando nightclub, the scene of a fatal shooting. Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., left, addresses reporters during a news conference after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Ray Rivera, left, a DJ at Pulse Orlando nightclub, is consoled by a friend, outside of the Orlando Police Department after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub, Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; St. George News Ray Rivera, left, a DJ at Pulse Orlando nightclub, is consoled by a friend, outside of the Orlando Police Department after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at the nightclub, Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; St. George News Imam Muhammad Musri, center, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, addresses reporters while flanked by members of law enforcement and community leaders during a news conference after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Law enforcement personnel block off a street near Pulse nightclub after a fatal shooting Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; St. George News Dr. Michael Cheatham, chief surgeon of the Orlando Health Regional Medical Center hospital, addresses reporters during a news conference after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Sunday. Watching are Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, second from right, and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Concerned friends and family of victims at Pulse nightclub, where multiple fatalities were reported, wait outside of the Orlando Police Department, Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; St. George News Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer addresses reporters while flanked by members of law enforcement and community leaders during a news conference after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Orlando Police Chief John Mina, center, addresses reporters during a news conference after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack; St. George News Concerned friends and family of victims at the Pulse nightclub, where multiple fatalities were reported after a shooting, wait outside of the Orlando Police Department, Sunday in Orlando, Florida, June 12, 2016 | Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; St. George News
Written by MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press; Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Terrance Harris in Orlando contributed to this report.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGnews
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
If you vote for Hilary you can expect more of this. We need to Trump to put fear in the terrorists. Vote for Trump!
I hope St George’s gay club is taking the appropriate security measures so this can’t happen here.
LOL ! nice shot 422
Now that I posted a comment let’s see how long it takes RealLowlife to come in and do another one of brainless comments. .LOL !
Many Afghanistani immigrants here?
They persecute gays with impunity inmost Islam as state religion countries and Putin’s Russia hardly any better and we are going to worry about Southern Utah gays who haven’t even been noticed until this article?
Or what is one bar to another if you aren’t bar hopper or owner or supplier? Just some drinkers doing their thing?
Common culture here may be used to ignoring what they can’t change or build up or help or am I projecting (though not quite ignoring)
The continued otherizing of the LDS in this PC dominated nation annoys me. Hate crime protection for all minorities but the LDS because the nation has decided we are mainstreamed–that is until insult and shaming time?
America may be considered adult when this last legal to mock and malign and look at as a group not individuals is off limits for the snickers and smirks and definition by anything than their fruits or the results of their actions and ideals? Plus defining the group to a common narrative taught institutionally and generationally by the religious rivals of 150 years ago or if you will, the defacto state religion of WASPS?
Have you ever wondered what happened to the non-conformist religious nuts who left British Isles seeking and bringing freedom? The circuit riding preachers of the frontier and the Scots Irish, America’s fighting men? The military and the native Americans who both over punished each other group with atrocities? Sherman for example saw to the killing of the Buffalo to bring the plains Indians to their knees by starvation–that not an atrocity?
what’s your point?
Point is that the paranoia that some feel in Utah is probably not justified. And that one bar is like any other to those who prefer to ignore their existence.
That the LDS are otherized by some in America who are PC aware and protective of other minorities?
That the peoples who left the British Isles seeking and bringing freedom still exist in us collectively to some degree and that the nation hasn’t got its PC narrative down pat if still otherizing the LDS?
This isn’t the time to get on your right wing, wacko,teaparty,hate high horse.
This is a tragedy of tremendous scope.
I, for one, support common sense gun control, and would even suggest some control over hate speach which affects many of the weak minded.
Dang right, I hate that terrorist keep blowing America up bit by bit
They’re running loose all over America and all Obozo is worried about is making sure we don’t offend them
Obama made our country weak. Energy is not lost it is merely transferred. We need to transfer Americans fear to strength and transfer the strength of the terrorists into fear. And you can’t do that not wanting to offend the terrorist. Must offend and put fear in them. this goes for any bully, you stand up against them and they will fear you. (They may even call you the bully if they are Hilary supporters)
People walking around trying not to offend anybody has turned people into cowards and they are asleep like zombies. It’s time to rise up! Wake up America! You’ve been asleep too long.
If you’re not angry about it then you better check how far your liberalism has gone- it’s almost on Isis’s side
I’m with you ladybug. !!!!
Godisdead – apparently you’re one of the weak minded, in calling for “common sense gun control” after this radical Islamic attack. France has stringent gun control, but it didn’t stop their two mass shootings in the past year, also by radical Islamists. Notice the common thread yet?
You’re right Henry, France may have had two mass shootings in the last year even though they have “stringent gun control” policies. I ask you though, how many mass shootings has the United States had in that same time period? I don’t know for sure but I’d be willing to foster a guess that we have had at least 1 per month. France has gun control laws, we don’t. Notice a common thread yet?
Rainbow Dash – your guess is wrong. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) compared annual death rates from mass public shootings (4 or more killed) between 1 Jan 2009 and 1 Jan 2016, taking place in European Union countries and the U.S. and Canada.
France ranked #3 with an annual death rate of 0.347. The U.S. ranked #11 at 0.089. Even in comparing just the frequency of attacks per 1M population, France is still higher. France ranked #11 with a frequency per 1M of 0.092, while the U.S. ranked #12 at 0.078.
Overall, the European Union countries had a 55% higher casualty rate than the U.S.. The common thread is that the U.S. Is statistically less likely to suffer mass casualty shootings and deaths.
Godisdead, you shouldn’t call anyone “weak minded”
Don’t forget that muslimism is a religion of peace. Our muslim president will need to get on TV tonight and reaffirm this. This will also lead to lost business for homosexual men’s clubs throughout the US. Also be skeptical of any intial figures that the AP gives…
The press is .touting the Orlando shooting as the worst in U.S history. I guess that shooting incident that occurred up Hwy 18 back in 1857 doesn’t count because UT wasn’t officially a state yet.
you can’t count that one because “THE LORD” gave Brigham the ok to order the shooting in that case. plus, mormans can do no wrong. don’t forget it
Good point. I think the Mormons slaughtered more innocents than the Muslims.
All you guys need to google “Indian massacres” and compare it to “Mormon wars”. The first lists 10+ massacres both against and by U.S. Indians involving European/U.S. settlers. The second lists casualties that, other than Mountain Meadows, don’t even come close in body count to the Indian massacres. The last claim by 42214 (Mormons slaughtered more innocents than Muslims) – you’re using hyperbole, you can’t be serious, right?
Serious as a heart attack Henry. The Fancher party surrendered and had their hands up under a flag of truce when the brave Mormon militia slaughtered them and took the small children. It also sounds like you want to count all the stats except Mountain Meadows. You sound like Katie Couric’s documentary editor.
42214 – apparently your bigotry is affecting your reading comprehension. If you would’ve googled the items I specified, you would’ve seen the death toll from Mountain Meadows of 120, Haun’s Hill – 21, Battle Creek – 4. In massacres BY U.S. Indians, there 11 massacres of between 130 to 800 settlers or soldiers per massacre. In massacres OF U.S. Indians, there were 35 massacres of 150 to 1,000 Indians per massacre.
You can research for yourself the number and scope of Muslim massacres throughout history. The totals are in the millions. If you think the Mormon massacres are in any way comparable to the Muslim massacres, you truly need to put on a tin foil hat and head for the nearest insane asylum.
So it’s all about body counts? Spoken like a true believer,” We’re not as bad as them” is a weak argument
42214 – uh, I’m not LDS; I don’t attend any church. But I do try to act rationally and not let my judgment be jaded by biases, either for or against any person or group.
I laid out the data with not just the number of deaths in each incident, but also the number of incidents. I’m not defending the Mormon incidents, but they are factually minuscule in comparison to massacres by other groups. Are you so blinded by your anti-Mormon hatred that you can’t grasp that?
LOL–first you qualify this ignorance with “I think”. LOL?
While true that the LDS don’t often pushback, as Americans we ought to at least give ourselves permission to say to the free to speak that we do not like it?
LDS doesn’t push back? How do you account for the millions of dollars spent by the church to defeat Porp 8 in Calif a few years ago. Based on the church’s behavior and expressed attitudes toward the gay life style and LGBT community I wouldn’t be surprised if Tommy Monson gave the Florida shooter a medal for doing the Lord’s work.
Political activity by members is pushback? Not hardly. It is politically trying to form the future which will someday be history?
American LDS have same rights as other Americans to run for office, vote, or volunteer of pat for activism to defeat a ballot issue. It isn’t as if they used executive orders to bypass the political process.
After the marches on the headquarters of the church in SLC, which could only happen in a top down church and why the LDS were targeted. One place to protest? One black church was pushed around a bit but it is hard to group attack congregational based religions. Anyway after that bit of contention and diversion from business as usual the church said that it wouldn’t oppose gay unions. Exactly the reason that after all liberal states had opted for gay marriage that the powers who plan their political machinations targeted Utah, so that message didn’t get out?
it would have been so much better and left traditional since cavemen societies marriages alone and the transition so much easier and more simple and less chaotic. But chaos is the name of the game for Marxist change IMO and as one can read online – Communist Manifesto one place.
Gay unions with protections and laws since any contract by law is a contract? Gay marriage is painted as equality but Americans already have equality by law so is for social and cultural change? They attempt to legislate respect? Those funny folk who once prated that you “can’t legislate morality?”
Even the Mountain Meadow massacre is not the worst mass killing in histor. It was actually the battle at Wounded Knee. Do some research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
This isn’t hate? Projects much of the real hateful innards of some folks always on the prod for those not in their politically not diverse camp.
“godisdead June 12, 2016 at 12:52 pm Reply
This isn’t the time to get on your right wing, wacko,teaparty,hate high horse.
This is a tragedy of tremendous scope.”
Yeah this is all about hate. that’s why that idiot Real Life visits the site
#dumpsterlosthismeds
Usual attempt at Mormon shaming? Time to put the MMM in it’s proper place IMO. I haven’t killed anyone except as Jimmy Carter committed adultery–in his mind.
“xbcmc059 June 12, 2016 at 1:24 pm Reply
The press is .touting the Orlando shooting as the worst in U.S history. I guess that shooting incident that occurred up Hwy 18 back in 1857 doesn’t count because UT wasn’t officially a state yet.”
First of all in truth seeking read all sides not the hype of a group? The 1897-Iron County Militia project that used to be online was the most balanced and informative and non-revisionist as are some recent oral traditions and histories pointing fingers to divert fingers pointed in a direction they don’t agree with. I sure wish that i had copied everything on it–maybe a lesson somewhere there.
So lets start with the massacres Americas forgives each other or themselves for?
” It is a fact not generally known that no complete account of this massacre has ever been published. The letter furnished by Reverend R. Cordley to the Congressional Record a few days after the event and before all the facts and incidents had become known, and which was republished in Boughton & McAllister’s Directory of Lawrence 1865, is about all the literature we can find in regard to it.
Lawrence Raid
The Lawrence, Kansas Raid as illustrated in Harper’s Weekly, September, 1863.
This image available for photo prints & commercial downloads HERE!
Mr. Cordley’s letter is made the basis of this history, to which is added the personal experience and observations of a number of residents who providentially escaped the general slaughter and who now recall the terrible events of those few hours as though they occurred yesterday.
We would like to give the personal experience of every one of the survivors and especially record in detail the deeds of heroism enacted by the brave women of Lawrence who in that fearful hour saved many a precious life, and extinguished the flames in nearly a hundred burning dwellings. But volumes would be required for such an undertaking.
http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ks-lawrencemassacre.html
Quantrill has been elevated to bad boy Scots Irish Frontiersman status and glorified for toughness in movies? Something wrong here?
You should change your name to B S King
The Jayhawkers who retaliated and kept things hot on the border. Utahns were then safely in Utah and could sit out the Civil War and build a culture and society without diffusion for 150 years?
Current national narrative is created by the media now just like then so the non-reading masses are led and most seem to only care if they are in the current accepted mindset? Few contrarians like Niall Ferguson or intellectuals who are more immune to propaganda than the common narrative hordes (mobs)?
http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/content/jayhawkers
After the Mormons were sent on their own long walk :
“Led by strident abolitionists, including Charles R. Jennison and James Montgomery, Free-State men formed vigilante units to protect themselves against the depredations of proslavery forces during the time of “Bleeding Kansas.” Free-State politician James H. Lane addressed his forces as jayhawkers when he led the defense of Lawrence during the so-called Wakarusa War, in which Free-State forces clashed with their proslavery counterparts, the “border ruffians,” in the fall of 1855.
When the Civil War began, these vigilante units mustered into the federal army and became formally recognized Union regiments calling themselves “Jayhawkers.” Some men who enlisted in the jayhawker outfits were sincere abolitionists, some were devout Unionist and brave soldiers defending their homeland, and others were bullies and thieves who took advantage of the chaos of war. Many who served in these jayhawker brigades and regiments had old scores to settle with proslavery Missourians from the days of Bleeding Kansas.”
The James and Dalton gangs were also from Western Missouri. John Brown from there or close by. The nation launched an army at Utah because Southern sympathizer Floyd wanted the army away from the south. http://www.historynet.com/utah-war-us-government-versus-mormon-settlers.
“Judge William W. Drummond was particularly obnoxious to Salt Lake society. He lectured polygamists for their immoral lifestyle while he was cohabitating with another man’s wife. Of even greater irritation, Drummond, along with Judges George P. Stiles and John F. Kinney, all sought to recoup federal jurisdiction from Utah’s probate courts, which the Mormons had been creatively using to circumvent federal authority.”
That federal authority was kept by Congress not a allowing Utah the popular sovereignity to become a state while the same philosophy had been reason okay to let them be run out of other areas. I assume that the mobs could rule because people had moved west faster than law keepers could be built up – plus the wide open spaces?
A Lieutenant Carletoninvestigated the MMM and was prepare to overpunish southern Utah if it could be proven that whites were in it not just Indians. Miracle that Carleton and Cradlebaugh so intent on finding whites to prosecute that didn’t go after Indians? http://mountainmeadows.unl.edu/archive/mmm.doc.carleton.1902.html
Carleton then called off Utah to take the Navajos on a killing and chilling long walk in the customary way of that era if you weren’t a white WASP settler?
http://www.canyondechelly.net/long_walk.html
Then Utah had to gut being overseen by another states militia in form of Colonel Connor and 200 volunteers. They weren’t in Utah long before launching a massacre on a band of mostly women and children Shosones http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/american_indians/bearrivermassacre.html
and http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/01/29/native-history-bear-river-massacre-devastates-northwestern-shoshone-153317
But then massacres of native Americans do not count in the USA count of massacre victims?
The fight is not with Mormons today. None of you were there in the past. If the accounts of history are reported like they are today then your facts are not the truth. No one knows, we weren’t there, but today was another terrorist attack, let’s focus on that and fight this evil that Obama and others do not want to offend
You Tell like it is ladybug..!!! the trolls are everywhere today
Trolls? Come on Dumpster, even YOU can admit to being a troll.
Did you all see this: Obama: ‘We’ are to blame, not Islamic terrorism, for massacre
What? Mr Obama I’m not part of that “We” you are to blame for not wanting to offend anyone! You are to blame for making America weak!
Is anyone else thinking: thank god it was a bunch of gay men in a sleazy night club and not a schoolyard full of kids? anyways hussein obama might come after the guns harder than he did after sandy hook, and then the only ones left with guns will be the muslims, and that’s what hussein would like… “allahu akbar!”
Is BS similar to propaganda?
But I have offered the sources. Lawrence Kansas was larger in lives lost than the MMM and the Bear River Massacre by Connor and his California militia is set at 450 women and children and old men massacred.
Here is the 1857 Iron County Militia Project back up and running. I was distressed at it being not longer available but i suppose someone just forgot to pay the rent so the public can once again access it.
All things looked at here and all books on the subject reviewed by historians seeking truth and balance. No BS. LOL.
http://www.1857ironcountymilitia.com/
I was thinking that the stage is set and being set for more of this and that only God can save us. A life is a life and none are for others to be taking. I am glad that it was not in my backyard for sure but don’t wish it on anyone.
ummm….. No, we’re not thinking that. If that is your thinking, then you need some serious mental help and counseling. I sincerely hope that you seek it.
I agree with you all that this is not the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
But sadly the most recent and leaves us wondering what and where next? We cry peace peace and there is no peace?
If there is every peace, you better run to the hills, because it will be false peace and the antichrist is rising
This massacre was brought to you by Obama and his ilk. Sadly, we will see more of these atrocities as election day draws nearer. I agree with ladybugavenger that Obama has weakened America to the point that our enemies do not fear us anymore. He has racially divided this nation, as was his intent all along. He has destroyed the economy, weakened our military and emboldened our enemies. It was all his plan. Remember that it only took 3% of the colonists to fight and win our independence from the British. If America would get off its duff and get serious about our safety and freedoms, it could be done again.