Pulse nightclub shooting
Fig. 1 — Visual Archive: Pulse nightclub shooting
On June 12, 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 58 in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. Pulse was hosting a "Latin Night", and most of the victims were of Latino descent. In a 911 call made shortly after the shooting began, Mateen swore allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said the U.S. killing of Abu Waheeb in Iraq the previous month "triggered" the shooting. He later told a negotiator he was "out here right now" because of the American-led interventions in Iraq and in Syria and that the negotiator should tell the United States to stop the bombing. The incident was deemed a terrorist attack by FBI investigators. Orlando Police officers fatally shot Mateen after a three-hour standoff. The shooting was the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the September 11 attacks, and the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history until the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.