Posted on 06/22/2016 3:07:33 AM PDT by Enterprise
ORLANDO — After an initial burst of fire between Omar Mateen and a security guard at the Pulse nightclub, a group of five or six police officers arrived on the scene within minutes, broke through a large glass window and entered the club as the killing of 49 people was underway inside, according to a Belle Isle, Fla., police officer who was among the first responders.
Officer Brandon Cornwell, 25, said the ad-hoc team spent the first seconds in the dimly lit club “trying to locate exactly where the shooter was — we kept hearing people scream and shots fired.”
He and the other officers followed the sounds to the bathroom area, where Mateen was now holed up. But instead of entering the bathroom, the officers aimed their assault rifles toward the area and were told by commanders to hold their position as the sounds of gunfire stopped, according to Cornwell. And so they waited “15 or 20 minutes — could’ve been longer” — until the SWAT team arrived, he said. Cornwell never saw Mateen.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I hear that the guard quickly realized that he was outgunned so he left the gunfight and went to call the cops.
That wasn’t the best source. Here’s a better one:
‘The only person to escape from the carnage inside a Orlando gay club’s bathroom has spoken out for the first time. Norman Casiano, 26, was shot in the back four times by shooter Omar Mateen as he hid in the restroom with around thirty other people. Casiano revealed how the crazed laughed as he slaughtered his victims.
Norman only survived because he managed to climb over his friends’ dead bodies to safety…’
http://www.realcoolvideos.com/orlando-laugh
Selective editing to fit the liberal meme.
The SWAT boys needed their fun too ,, and they certainly needed the overtime for waiting around for 3 hours formulating a plan (to attack an already cornered assailant??) while wounded people bled out 2 blocks from the best trauma center in my city.
This is Columbine all over again. Police stood around while people shot bled out. That’s why the death toll is so high. I noticed from the pressers they were VERY sensitive to this topic from the beginning.
We have brave officers responding to a mass shooting spree within a minute.
They enter the dark room and head towards the sound of gunfire knowing the bad guy has the drop on them and also knowing their body armor will not stop a rifle round.
And what do almost half you tough guys say? How many did the Police shoot? Why didn’t they do more!
Talk about a lot of hot air and Monday morning quarterbacking.
You sound just like the idiot liberals, accuse and convict before the investigation is even over.
You're right. He actually said, "I grabbed my murderous weapon-of-war, the AR-15 Assault Rifle, which should be banned from the entire planet Earth, and ran."
Among the information released: a partial transcript of the gunman’s phone calls while the standoff was still underway. Though authorities divulged few details about what Mateen said, a timeline released shows when and how Orlando police officers responded to his words and actions.
Mina said his team shouldn’t be criticized over the length of the standoff.
“I think there’s a misconception that we didn’t do anything for three hours. I’m just trying to clarify that that’s absolutely not true,” Mina said.
According to the FBI timeline, Mateen opened fire at 2:02 a.m., and Officer Adam Gruler, who was moonlighting at the club, exchanged gunfire with him from the parking lot.
Gruler then retreated and called for backup.
For the next six minutes, Mateen worked his way through the club, according to witnesses, shooting people with a military-style rifle and a semi-automatic handgun, then doubling back and shooting at those who had not yet died.
Those backup officers arrived at 2:08 a.m. and went into the club and fired at Mateen, the FBI timeline shows.
‘Those killings are on the suspect’
It’s not clear when that gun battle ended, but Mina said there were no more shots fired by or at the gunman until about 5:15 a.m., about 10 minutes after the police department forced its way into the building with explosives and an armored vehicle.
Thanks. :)
If he was hiding in the bathroom with hostages, they should have been able to clear the rest of the club of wounded.
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BUT THEY DIDN’T BECAUSE THEY HAD TO PROTECT NEXT YEARS SWAT BUDGET
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And if the shooting had stopped, it would have been foolish to blindly storm his hideout(?) possibly causing him to shoot more people, or detonate some unknown explosive device.
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That’s guesswork... I’ve lived in Orange county for 40 years ... The SWAT boys were marking their territory and couldn’t let others finish the job... besides it would look really bad when it’s time to justify the SWAT budget. SWAT has body armor and they (cumulatively across the country) get paid $$$BILLIONS$$$ in overtime and special pay to step into harms way... So instead they left him in a closed room with a large number of hostages for 3 hours .. HOW MANY DID HE KILL IN THOSE 3 HOURS... I myself am not “Rambo” but if those steroid pumped tweekers in black want to get paid then occasionally they have to do their job and take a chance on getting shot at.
Nobody is accusing the initially responding police of doing anything wrong in their initial response. The questions are about why they let the terrorist continue his assault, and why it seems that they didn't do more to rescue people outside of the bathroom.
You’re welcome. I also wonder if this clarifies how Mateen was able to kill so many with so few rounds. I read somewhere that the bathroom hostages attempted to cluster in the stall furthest from the door. If that’s true, then each bullet could easily have done double duty, or perhaps even more. They’d have been at fairly close range.
Gruler then retreated and called for backup.
So, the one armed defender cut and ran? I had assumed he was killed. What a hero. He sent potentially a couple hundred unarmed people to their deaths. Fortunately, some escaped. I’m sure he he’ll get a medal for that.
He wasn’t “hiding” in the bathroom. He was ranting to 911 about ISIS and threatening to blow stuff up. He should have been engaged immediately and taken down.
Calling the people in the bathroom ‘hostages’ gives the police an excuse for not doing something sooner. I do not think they were hostages in the traditional sense, but rather Omar was in the process of killing them.
I don’t know if this answers your question, but from ~2:15 to ~3:30 Mateen was regularly calling the crisis negotiation hotline. Both he and escaping hostages claimed Mateen had explosive vests. At 4:21 some hostages were safely evacuated via a dressing room window. Perhaps as long as no further shooting was heard, and people were being safely extracted, they held off? (I don’t know; just guessing.)
Speculating further:
His relationship with the CIA began in the early 80’s after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We did covertly support the mujaheddin back in the day.
He was an asset of value based on his close relationships to several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle into the 90’s.
I will speculate further and say he was again an asset when we were planning the Afghanistan invasion after 9/11.
When the WH was floating the idea of a treaty with the taliban, he may have been approached for input, which would explain his visits to the State Department and (if reports are confirmed) the WH.
Common sense tells me the above is the only reason his pro-taliban, anti-US rants on his broadcasts were tolerated without any alarm. “Seddique? He's harmless. He's one of us.” or “Omar is Seddique’s son. He is as harmless as his Dad.”
If my speculation is close to reality, I am guessing the feds had an “oh shit!” moment after the attack after realizing Seddique was not as harmless (or stupid) as they thought, and had been plying them all along.
That’s an excellent point. Btw, Mateen didn’t spend much time in the bathroom. He was in the main club for most of the episode. One guy in the bathroom was texting his mother. From the time he texted, “He’s in here with us,” to the time he was dead was very short. I.e.: the timing of the bathroom shoot up immediately follows that particular text.
‘[The son told his mother] he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide and then wrote ‘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.’’
An autopsy would focus on documenting trauma to the bodies, cause of death (small caliber gunshots to x, y, and z), and recovering the projectiles with a chain of custody. The ME isn’t in charge of the ballistics tests, or at this point, figuring out who shot whom in a mass shooting.
Other than hearsay, the ME has no way of knowing if some of the projectiles came from police weapons, or weapons of other terrorists yet unidentified.
That would certainly explain how they so quickly ‘’lost’ Omar’s wife.
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