June 12, 2016, Forty-nine people murdered and 53 wounded in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida USA.
Online sources report, about 320 people were still inside the club, which was serving last call drinks at around 2:00 a.m. EDT
At around the same time, Omar Mateen arrived at the club via rental van, parking it in the parking lot of a neighboring car shop. He walked toward the building armed with a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol.
Mateen bypassed Officer Adam Gruler, a uniformed off-duty Orlando Police Department (OPD) officer working extra duty as a security guard, entered the building through its southern entrance, and began shooting patrons.
A Marine Corps veteran working as a nightclub bouncer immediately recognized the sounds as gunfire, which he described as "high caliber," and jumped over a locked door behind which dozens of people were paralyzed by fear, then opened a latched door behind them, allowing approximately 70 people to escape.
in a 911 call made shortly after the shooting began, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, swore allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said the U.S. killing of Abu Waheeb in Iraq the previous month "triggered" the shooting. He later told a negotiator he was "out here right now" because of the American-led interventions in Iraq and in Syria and that the negotiator should tell the United States to stop the bombing. The incident was deemed a terrorist attack by FBI investigators.
Orlando Police officers fatally shot the shooter after a three-hour standoff.