Shoes melted covering an attack Trump called ‘underreported’

“Your brother is dead,” I thought as she talked. I hoped I was wrong.

She’d rushed to Orlando after the Pulse nightclub shootings in June 2016. Her brother had been there the night evil arrived in a hail of bullets and left 49 dead.

“It’s going to be the longest day ever,” she told the media scrum packed around her. “Nobody can tell us anything.”

Omar Mateen, who voiced allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call, died that night in a shootout with cops. His widow, Noor Salman, was arrested last month on charges of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting the attempted provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

America woke up to the awful news on a Sunday. By that afternoon, I was a block from Pulse, popular in the LGBTQ community and beyond, talking to grieving neighbors.

AJC reporter Ernie Suggs and photographer Curtis Compton also were dispatched to Orlando, while more than 30 of our colleagues here put out a special digital edition on Sunday, then an eight-page special section in Monday’s print newspaper.

Over the next several days, Suggs, Compton and I reported from the shooting scene, the hospital, a candlelight vigil in downtown Orlando, a United Methodist church that hosted a interfaith prayer service and the airport, where then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden arrived to pay respects.

The current president finds the efforts of my and the hundreds of other news outlets there lacking. The Orlando massacre made the White House’s recently released list of “underreported terror attacks.”

“It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,” President Donald Trump said this week at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. “And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”

Also on the White House list: the 2016 bombings in Brussels, the deadly 2015 rampage in San Bernardino, Calif., and a 2014 standoff in Sydney, Australia. The events, as did others on the list, received blanket, often global coverage.

“Almost all the attacks were reported by the news media and many were widely covered by local and international outlets,” the Associated Press noted.

Trump’s remarks happened about 90 minutes from Pulse. I happen to know as I flew into Tampa’s airport and drove to the shooting site.

My two coworkers and I spent about a week there (a child died in a freak alligator attack at a nearby Disney resort, and part of our reporting that week dealt with that tragedy). Day after day, the perimeter around Pulse expanded, as investigators broadened their scope. More streets around the scene were blocked, meaning more walking. Spending hours on the asphalt in Orlando in June starts to feel like walking on the sun.

By week’s end, the soles of my shoes had melted. I took a photo in case anyone questioned the $8 pair of sneakers I bought at Target. (No one did.) Two weeks later, my new shoes and I were off to Dallas after five law enforcement officers were shot to death. (That incident did not make the White House list.)

By the way, the young woman who came to Orlando hoping to find her brother did not hear good news when she finally met with officials. Frank Hernandez had died, at 27.

We quoted Hernandez’s sister and ran her photo at the time, but I’m not going to name her again. She’s been hounded enough by reporters.

JENNIFER BRETT / JBRETT@AJC.COM In the center of this media scrum was a frightened young woman desperate for answers. Her brother had been in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando the night a gunman opened fire, leaving 49 dead.