More than a week after he killed 49 people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, details have come out about what suspected shooter Omar Mateen did in the days leading up to the attack, as well as about his wife Noor Salman, who is currently being investigated for a possible connection to the shooting.
Soon after the shooting occurred, reports surfaced that Mateen had been seen at Pulse Nightclub in the past. According to CNN, he was also there on the night of the shooting. Law enforcement officials say that he had paid the entrance cover, gotten a wristband, and went inside. His whereabouts in the intervening two hours after he left, but before he returned to begin the attack are still a mystery. It’s also a mystery as to why he bought plane tickets for his family to travel to San Francisco in July three days before the attack.
There’s also new information on what Mateen did a week before carrying out his attack. According to Fox News, he bought $9,000 worth of jewelry at a Kay Jewelers, after being turned away from a gun shop nearby for acting suspicious. Mateen had been trying to buy “bulk ammunition and heavy-duty body armor,” but store owner Robbie Abell said that the questions he asked, “were not the normal questions a normal person would be asking.” He was later able to buy firearms at another shop.
As for Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, ABC News reports that she took all special education classes as a middle school student in California. A former teacher says she had trouble with retention, conceptualizing and understanding. Her parents agree, saying that Salman was unaware of Mateen’s plans, because “she doesn’t understand ’cause and effect.'”
This all adds up to a compelling but frustratingly incomplete picture of who Omar Mateen was, why he carried out this attack and whether he did it with help. More information is sure to come out as law enforcement continues investigating.