FBI agents on Friday questioned a member of the Florida mosque attended by Omar Mateen, the man who shot 49 people to death at a gay nightclub, as new information surfaced revealing the killer had exhibited chronic behavioral problems during his youth.Academic records obtained by Reuters showing Mateen was frequently suspended as a student - at least twice for fighting before he was transferred to a special high school for potential dropouts - added to a disturbing portrait of the long-troubled gunman who committed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Mateen, the 29-year-old private security guard shot dead by police at the end of the June 12 massacre in Orlando, has been described by his first wife - whom he divorced after a brief marriage - as an abusive, mentally disturbed man with a violent temper.
Others who knew him recalled Mateen, a U.S. citizen and Florida resident born in New York to Afghan immigrants, as a quiet, socially awkward individual who kept largely to himself.
| "He was a quiet man..." |
| At least. The official facade is cracking... |
Nevertheless, Mateen appears to have been "self-radicalized" and acting without any direction from outside networks, although his second wife, Noor Salman, had known of his plans to carry out the attack, U.S. officials have said.
| We actually don't know that. We don't know who he talked to, who his acquaintances were, and who elsewhere in the world knew about him. One focus is correctly on the mosque: if he had an outside handler, that's where the handler would be... |
"We were meeting with some agents," Saleh told Reuters, declining to identify the person interviewed. "They were asking questions relative to the incident that happened on Sunday."
| Why does a member of CAIR sit in on official interviews in a terrorist investigation? |
Two of those suspensions, within a week of each other in May of 2001, were listed as discipline for "fighting with injury" during his freshman year at Martin County High School. Days after that second suspension, Mateen was transferred to Spectrum Junior-Senior High School, a dropout prevention center run by the district, records showed.
He returned to Martin County High in January 2002, stayed there for another year, then withdrew from mainstream high school and enrolled instead in adult education classes through April 2003.
His academic performance was mixed, a combination of high grades and failing marks, in contrast to his mostly dismal report cards from elementary school.