One Orlando begins funds distribution
Families of the 49 people killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre will receive $350,000 each from the One Orlando Fund — after parents, siblings and spouses settle disputes over who gets the money, officials announced Monday.
The 37 survivors who were hospitalized will receive from $65,000 to $300,000 each, depending on the number of nights they spent in the hospital, and the 31 who sought outpatient treatment for their injuries will get about $35,000 each.
Another 182 clubgoers who were there when the June 12 shootings started but who escaped physical injury will receive about $25,000 each.
“While no amount of money will ever erase the horrific events of that day, we are hopeful support from the One Orlando Fund will help victims and their families with the healing process,” said Orlando Magic CEO Alex Martins, who was asked by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to chair the One Orlando Fund board of directors.
The fund now stands at just over $29.5 million, with money to be divided among 299 families and survivors whose presence in the club has been verified by the FBI.
For Chris Littlestar, 25, who was shot five times and spent nine nights in the hospital, the payout is one more step in a long recovery.
“Anything I get, I will be grateful,” he said. “I’m just glad the hospitals decided to waive their bills and that the IRS has said they won’t tax this money. But mostly, I’m just glad I’m still alive.”
The exact amounts to survivors was still being tweaked late Monday as fund administrator Ken Feinberg worked with the FBI and local hospitals to confirm claims.
Officials will begin transferring the money electronically today and said all of it would be distributed by the end of the week. But Feinberg said that more than half of the families of the 49 victims are still arguing over who deserves the money.
“We are already involved in a Battle Royale between completing claimants who want the money — biological parents vs. samesex partners, divorced spouses demanding they get the money to the exclusion of the other spouse, siblings of the dead coming in claiming that a parent was absent ... or never had anything to do with the victim,” he said.
Now that the money is being distributed, Feinberg said he hoped families would want to resolve the disputes quickly.
But even families who aren’t fighting over the money may still have to wait.
Christine Leinonen, whose son, 32-year-old Christopher “Drew” Leinonen, was killed in the shootings, said her share of the money is still at least a year away.
“The probate court is telling me it’ll be year or two before it’s through their system,” she said. “I have to prove to the court that I’m the personal representative, that I paid for the funeral, that [Drew] doesn’t have any kids out there . ... But at least his friends who were in the club will get some compensation. And I know they couldn’t go back to work for a while. They experienced what people in war do.”
Board members agonized over how much to give to family members and various categories of survivors, knowing that many were traumatized in ways that will likely never heal.
Ultimately, they decided against an initial proposal from Feinberg that 75 percent of the money raised go to the families of the dead so they could give more to survivors.
“I think that collective number of the dead and the injured and all the family members shows us the true impact of this tragedy,” said board member Carlos Carbonell, an Orlando tech entrepreneur. “Now that this is done, I think, regretfully, we have an example that the rest of the nation can follow.”
Fellow board member Diana Bolivar, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro Orlando, said she felt the process had been marked by integrity.
“I’m very proud of how our community came together in this board, and since Day One, we took it very seriously,” she said. “We know money cannot make someone whole, but we were still dealing with people whose lives have been changed forever.”
The fund included more than $9.5 million raised through a record-setting GoFundMe campaign launched by Equality Florida, the statewide gay and transgender civil rights group. That campaign, started within hours of the shootings, drew more than 120,000 donors from 120 countries.