Family man living American dream who turned into a volcano of hate
Happy father, mother and a sweet little boy – the family pictures of Omar Mateen are wreathed in smiles. But images of the Orlando killer’s home life are as deceptive as the impression that local golfers had of him as the cheerful club security guard – always cheerful and happy to help out.
as america struggles to understand the man responsible for its worst ever mass shooting, those who knew him well – whether his ex-wife or former work colleague – have a revealed a disturbing portrait of a seething volcano of a man, filled with pent-up hatred and resentment that was likely to erupt without warning.
On paper at least Mateen was a classic second generation immigrant, sharing religious traditions he inherited from his afghan-born parents with the cultural ways of his native US. Born in New york, his family – which includes three sisters – moved to Fort St Lucie, on the atlantic coast of central Florida, when he was a child. There, father Seddique built up a successful life insurance business.
at high school, where he played american football, Mateen was shy, ‘dorky’ and was frequently picked on, although he tried to make light of it, say ex- classmates. Childhood friend Sean Chagani said he was clearly ‘different’ but definitely not violent.
Mateen long wanted to be a policeman and took a two year minor [associate’s] degree in criminal justice at the local Indian River State college.
an openly gay former high school classmate said Mateen was friendly towards him and showed no sign of homophobia back then. Samuel King – a former drag queen at a restaurant called Ruby Tuesday – recalled Mateen, while paying his way through college by working in a health food shop, would regularly come to the restaurant and chat to him and the other openly gay and lesbian staff. ‘He always had a smile on his face,’ said King.
Mateen, who became obsessed with working out in the gym, applied to join the police but didn’t make it through training school, according to Syed Rahman, the iman of his family’s local mosque. Instead, after working in half a dozen dead- end jobs, in 2007 he joined the British security giant G4S as a security guard. Mateen’s responsibilities included working at a local courthouse and later manning the gate at a golf resort. Tragically in the circumstances, in the US security guards are routinely armed and so Mateen was trained in how to use guns – a proficiency he would later put to deadly use.
at G4S, he earned a reputation as a difficult employee. Colleagues complained about his behaviour. He in turn claimed he was being harassed because he was a Muslim. He was transferred to duties at a local golf resort, pGa Village, earning $1600 (£1200) a month. Former police officer Daniel Gilroy, who was Mateen’s partner there between 2014 and 2015, said he was openly racist and homophobic, continually making derogatory remarks about blacks, Hispanics and gays.
Gilroy says he complained to superiors about his offensive remarks but
they did nothing because Mateen was a Muslim. ‘It became quite apparent the guy had anger issues and was very unstable,’ he said, describing how Mateen would kick walls, slap desks and even hurl chairs across the room for no reason. ‘I quit because everything he said was toxic and the company wouldn’t do anything. The guy was unhinged and unstable. He talked of killing people.’ Gilroy said he was not surprised by what happened in Orlando, saying: ‘I always knew he had something in him like that.’
Young women complained that he was creepy. Jasmine Kalenuik recalls how, when Mateen was working at the golf resort, he would check her ID and cling to it, ‘breathing weird with this crazed stare’.
The first to experience the violence of his terrible temper was Sitora Yusifiy, an attractive young Uzbek who came to the US with her family aged 11 and settled in New Jersey. After meeting Mateen through an online dating service, she agreed to move to Florida in 2009 and marry him.
Living in a two-bedroom flat in Fort Pierce owned by Mateen’s parents, Miss Yusifiy said Mateen, who took steroids for his bodybuilding, was within weeks starting to behave oddly, suddenly flying off the handle, verbally and physically. She concluded he suffered from bipolar disorder. ‘He would be perfectly normal and happy, joking, laughing one minute,’ she said yesterday.
‘The next minute his temper … his body would just [go] totally the opposite.’ He was soon beating her for the slightest offence such as the laundry not being done, attacking her even when she was asleep.
Describing him as ‘totally two different people sometimes’, she said he wasn’t particularly religious and preferred to spend his time at the gym rather than praying. He occasionally made homophobic remarks, she added.
The marriage ended after just four months when her parents, learning of the abuse, came down to Florida to rescue her. ‘They literally saved my life,’ she said.
Public records show he married again, this time to a Californian woman named Noor Zahi Salman. In 2013, they bought a home together near his parents and had a son, now three.
THe bizarre collection of items inside Mateen’s home yesterday offers little by way of insight into his mindset. A sword, a Ninja Turtle backpack, books on Muslim ideology and a calendar marked ‘ D-Day’ adorn the apartment at the Woodland Condominium in Fort Pierce.
Yesterday, strangely, there was a Christmas wreath hanging outside the red door. What looked like a ceremonial sword sat proudly by a TV set in the living room, and workout equipment lies in a corner.
There were books entitled Crucial Matters in the Life of a Muslim and Being Palestinian Makes Me Smile. A Mickey and Minnie Mouse calendar was marked ‘D-Day, 10 pm’ on June 7. Since the real D-Day is June 6, the scrawl raises the question of whether Mateen had his own ‘ DDay’ planned sooner than the June 12 horror. It is unclear if his mar- riage ended before the massacre. His wife has yet to speak publicly and deleted her social media pages.
Some friends say Mateen became far more religious after his divorce from Miss Yusifiy. At the family’s local mosque, the Islamic Centre of Fort Pierce, imam Syed Rahman said his mosque denounced radicalism and insisted Mateen would never have heard anything from him to encourage him to kill.
But was Mateen getting more extreme spiritual guidance elsewhere? Police reportedly believe Mateen was linked to radical Muslim cleric Marcus Robertson, a former New York gang leader and jailbird who now lives in Florida where he preaches anti-gay hatred.
Police say Mateen had joined Robertson’s online Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.
It emerged yesterday that he visited Mecca in 2011 and 2012.
In 2013, he first came on the FBI’s radar when he made ‘inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties’. He was interviewed twice but there was insufficient evidence to charge. He was questioned again in 2014 over possible ties to an American suicide bomber in Syria who went to the same high school but agents concluded they had had little contact.
It remains unclear whether his parents saw any radicalisation, or indeed whether they contributed to it. Some neighbours described Seddique – known to them as Sid – and Shahla Mateen as ‘very Americanised’ and ‘the nicest people in the world’.