Omar Mateen

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen (عمر مير صديق متين; born Omar Mir Seddique; November 16, 1986 – June 12, 2016) was an American terrorist and mass murderer who murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed in a shootout with the local police.

Mateen was born Omar Mir Seddique on November 16, 1986, at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents.

His father, Mir Seddique Mateen, is from Herat and emigrated from Afghanistan in the 1980s and became a naturalized US citizen on November 17, 1989.

After being raised in New York for a few years, he moved with his family to Port St. Lucie, Florida in 1991.

His family was described as being moderate Muslims and "all-American".

At a young age, Mateen displayed a preoccupation with violence, the Associated Press and The Washington Post reported.

For his elementary and middle school education, he attended classes in St. Lucie County, Florida.

While at Mariposa Elementary School, a third grade teacher wrote that Mateen was "very active ... constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive ... much talk about violence & sex ... hands all over the place – on other children, in his mouth".

In the seventh grade, Mateen was moved to a separate class with the purpose of avoiding "conflicts with other students" and suffered from poor scholarly performance due to "many instances of behavioral problems".

A classmate at Mariposa said that Mateen was a bully, disrespectful to girls and acted like he was better than his classmates.

Another classmate reported that Mateen was bullied at school because of his weight and his Afghan heritage.

His parents were described as "dismissive" of his poor behavior while his father "had a reputation for being disrespectful of female teachers and dismissive of complaints about his son".

In 1999, while Mateen was in the eighth grade, his teacher sent a letter to his father regarding an "attitude and inability to show self-control".

Mateen began his secondary education at Martin County High School in 2000, and at the age of 14 was expelled after being in a fight in math class, where he was briefly arrested without being handcuffed and charged with battery and disrupting school, though the charges were later dropped.

While a sophomore attending Spectrum, an alternative high school for students with behavioral issues, classmates told The Washington Post that Mateen cheered in support of the hijackers during the September 11 attacks and stated that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who taught him how to shoot AK-47s.

After his outburst, Mateen's father arrived at the school to pick him up and slapped him in the face, with Mateen later being suspended for five days after the incident.

Soon after the September 11 attacks, "he shocked other students on his school bus by imitating an exploding plane", reported The New York Times.

A retired Martin County High School dean, Dan Alley, said the school personnel "tried to counsel him and show him the error of his ways, but it never had the effect that we were hoping for" and that his father "would not back up the school, and he would always take his son's side".

Mateen was later sent to St. Lucie West Centennial High School after getting into a fight with another student.

His mother, Shahla Mateen, was taken into custody after she allegedly attacked her husband while he was brushing his teeth on the night of December 7, 2002.

Both of his parents first settled in New York, having four children, including Omar.

By the time, Mateen had returned and graduated from Martin County's Stuart Adult Vocational School in 2003, he had been suspended for 48 days for being involved in fights and injuring other students.

Mateen attended Indian River State College's Criminal Justice Training program and in a questionnaire, he admitted to committing or being involved in a crime that went undetected, but did not provide specific details.

Seddique Mateen was a secret informant for the FBI at times between January 2005 and June 2016.

He went on to earn an Associate of Science degree in criminal justice technology from the college in 2006.

He worked in a number of local stores and restaurants while attending school.

In October 2006, Mateen began working as a recruit for the Florida Department of Corrections, being assigned to the Martin Correctional Institution.

In a letter explaining his juvenile record as part of his successful application, Mateen explained the incident of when he was arrested at school when he was fourteen.

He also wrote that he had experimented with marijuana as a young teenager.

Following the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007, Mateen suggested in a corrections officer training class that he would bring a gun to class.

P.H. Skipper, who was the warden at the institution, wrote that "in light of the tragic events at Virginia Tech officer Mateen's inquiry about bringing a weapon to class is at best extremely disturbing."

Days later on April 27, 2007, Mateen "was involuntarily dismissed" from the program and never became a certified corrections officer.

Seddique Mateen also owns a non-profit company named The Durand Jirga, Inc. based in Port St. Lucie, Florida, which was founded in 2010 where he hosted a political commentary show that aired on the California-based Payam-e-Afghan television channel, in which he expressed anti-Pakistan views.

Before the shooting, he had been investigated for connections to terrorism by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013 and 2014.

During that period, he was placed on the Terrorist Screening Database, but was subsequently removed.

In a call to 9-1-1 during the shooting, Mateen identified himself as "Mujahideen", "Islamic Soldier", and "Soldier of God"; and pledged his allegiance multiple times to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who at the time was the leader of the militant jihadist group ISIL.

He said the shooting was "triggered" by an airstrike in Iraq that killed Abu Wahib, an ISIL commander, six weeks before.

It was the deadliest shooting by a single shooter in United States history until the Las Vegas Strip shooting on October 1, 2017.

Born in New York to Afghan-American parents, he moved to Florida as a child, where he displayed an interest in violence and had behavioral problems in school, including struggling academically and receiving numerous suspensions.

As an adult he drifted through various jobs and a failed marriage before eventually becoming a security guard by profession.