New details emerged on Monday about the terrorist attack at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the United States (U.S.) and the decision by police to ram the building with an armored vehicle to rescue the hostages held by gunman Omar Mateen, who had been in contact with police by phone during a three-hour standoff.
Mateen had made comments suggesting that he would kill hostages he held in a restroom, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in a news briefing.
“There was a timeline given and we believed that there was imminent loss of life that we needed to prevent,” Mina said. “It’s a tough decision to make knowing that people’s lives will be placed in danger by that, our officers’ lives would be placed in danger.”
Mateen attacked the club at 2 a.m. A uniformed off-duty Orlando police officer who was working at the club exchanged gunfire with Mateen. More officers arrived and entered the club, pulling people to safety and engaging Mateen in a gun battle. Mateen retreated to a club restroom. Although details provided by Mina were sketchy, it appears that some of the patrons of the club were already in the bathroom and at that point became hostages of the gunman. Fifteen to 20 people were hiding in a restroom on the other side of the club.
The hostage standoff lasted three hours. Mateen and authorities spoke by phone. It was during this period that Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
“He really wasn’t asking for a whole lot, and we were doing most of the asking,” Mina said.
As 5 a.m. approached, fearing further loss of life, Mina said he decided to make a move to rescue the hostages. Police used a BearCat armored vehicle to bust a hole in an exterior wall leading into the second restroom, the one on the opposite side of the club from where Mateen had holed up, Mina said. The people inside that second restroom escaped through the hole. Then Mateen emerged from the hole and engaged in a brief gun battle, with 11 police officers and three sheriff’s deputies exchanging fire with him.
At 5:53 a.m., Orlando police posted a bulletin: “Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.”
The attack had begun around closing time at Pulse. Last call had come and gone. Saturday night had become Sunday morning. But the dance floor remained crowded, with hundreds of sweaty men and women packed into one of Orlando’s most popular gay nightclubs, a low-slung building at the corner of W. Esther St. and S. Orange Ave.
“Reggaeton – Bachata – Merengue – Salsa” an advertisement on Pulse’s Twitter account had promised. This was “Latin Night.”
The club’s DJ, Ray Rivera, suddenly heard a sound, a pop-pop-pop. Firecrackers? He lowered the music and then heard it again. This was gunfire.
“I turned the music off and basically everyone was just running out,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. “It was just complete chaos.” He took cover behind the DJ booth. Several patrons joined him, everyone staying low. When there was a pause in the shooting — maybe the killer was reloading — Rivera said, “Come on, let’s go,” and he and the others fled through a rear exit.
One of the club patrons, Chris Hansen, who’d just moved to Florida a couple of months earlier, thought the popping sound was part of the music. “It went with the beat almost,” he said later.
A man with a long gun, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, was shooting people. It was Mateen, 29, an American who had purchased the rifle and a handgun in the past week. He had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
At 2:09 a.m., someone posted a frantic message to Pulse’s Facebook page: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”
What happened early Sunday morning in Orlando was the latest example of soft-target terrorism, the wholesale slaughter of civilians in locations with minimal security and many potential victims. This one had elements of what happened last fall in Paris — another attack on people having fun at a music venue on a weekend night.
The lucky ones were near an exit or somehow found a way to flee in those first seconds. But the club was designed for congregation, not escapes. Alex Choy, a former club employee, told the Miami Herald that the club has two main rooms, one for performances and drag shows to the left of the front door, and a larger dance room to the right that links to an outdoor patio. “It’s a very, very small space,” he said. “If there was any type of shooting, it wouldn’t take much to get everyone. Very close range.”
Hansen, the club-goer who had mistaken the gunfire for music, told the Associated Press that he escaped through the back of the venue by crawling on his elbows and knees.
“When I got across the street there was blood everywhere,” he said. “I was helping somebody because he was laying down and I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive. I took my bandana off, I shoved it in this hole, the bullet hole that was in his back.
“After everybody was out, the shooting was still going and the cops were still yelling, ‘Go! Go! Clear the area, clear the area!’ ” he added.
“I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” he said. “So I just dropped down. I just said, ‘Please, please, please, I want to make it out.’ And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don’t get shot.”
*Culled from The Washington Post.
