Questions about shooting remain after verdict
Questions have lingered in Damaris Benitez Torres’ mind since the day she lost her brother, Martin Benitez, in the Pulse nightclub.
“Did they try to rescue him? Did they give him first aid? How much time was he bleeding out before he died?” she asked after the gunman’s widow, Noor Salman, was acquitted Friday of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting her husband, Omar Mateen.
Salman’s trial revealed new details about the attack, which some survivors and loved ones have waited more than a year and a half to hear. But the end of the trial means some questions might never get answered.
“Now we are left with the uncertainty. It’s worse than before because with this, I thought we would have some closure for this pain that will never leave us,” Benitez Torres said.
The biggest question is whether her brother could have been saved. Martin Benitez was wearing a watch that monitored his pulse, his sister said. When the family got it back, it read 3:20 a.m.
“We assume that, more or less, that’s when he died,” Benitez Torres said. That was just over an hour after the shooting began. “My brother didn’t die instantly. He bled out and I know there was something that they could’ve done to rescue him.”
The trial did reveal some details investigators knew within days of the June 12, 2016, massacre but never