The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub last month had complained he was repeatedly taunted for being Muslim in his job as a security guard at a Florida courthouse, according to records released Monday.
(FOX)- Omar Mateen responded to the taunts by telling his co-workers that he had connections to terrorists and a mass shooter, but he later told his bosses he made that up to get them off his back, and the FBI determined he was not a threat.
“I love the United States. The boasting I did it just to satisfy the gang of co-workers who ganged up against me,” Mateen wrote in a letter to his bosses at G4S Secure Solutions, according to the documents released by the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office. “I’m 1,000% pure American. … I’m against these terrorists anyone of them.”
Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando during “Latin Night” on June 12 in a rampage that left 49 dead and 53 wounded. It was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Mateen, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during a call with police dispatchers amid a three-hour standoff, died in a hail of gunfire after police stormed the venue.
Mateen was born in New York and his family came from Afghanistan. According to the records, he told his bosses that when he first started working at the St. Lucie Courthouse, one guard told deputies that he was “a Muslim extremist and potential terrorist.”