The killer behind the deadliest mass shooting in US history was a “deeply disturbed” man who had dreams of joining the police, according to those who knew him.
Omar Mateen, 29, showed signs of “emotional instability” and “sickness”, his ex-wife Sitora Yusifiy said.
She claimed she had to be “rescued” from him by her family after their four-month-long marriage broke down in 2009.
“He was mentally unstable and mentally ill [and] obviously disturbed, deeply, and traumatised,” she said.
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Born in New York to Afghan parents, Mateen worked for private security firm G4S after gaining a degree in criminal justice technology in 2006.
He had expressed interest in joining the police but instead became a security officer, reports said.
A few years earlier he was a high school football player. One gay former classmate, Samuel King, said: “He clearly was not anti-[gay], at least not back then. He did not show any hatred to any of us. He treated us all like the individuals we were. He always smiled and said hello.”
But things appear to have changed in the years that followed.
By the time he carried out the deadly killing at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning, he had been investigated twice by the FBI in two years – once after making “inflammatory remarks” to a colleague and again over possible links to a suicide bomber.
And speaking after the massacre, his father Seddique Mir Mateen said his son had become enraged after seeing two men kissing in Miami months before.
He also said the attack had nothing to do with Islam, adding he was “in shock like the entire country”.
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A G4S co-worker told the New York Times: “[Mateen] talked about killing people all the time,” adding: “He was always shaken, always agitated, always mad.”