Omar Mateen’s wife remains silent on massacre
ORLANDO killer Omar Mateen’s current wife has gone into hiding and is remaining silent. His ex-wife, on the other hand, is speaking out.
OMAR Mateen looked like your average family man, posing for a picture with his wife and three-year-old son.
But he is the man responsible for killing 49 people and injuring 53 as he shot up the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando at about 2am on Sunday (4pm Sunday AEST).
The 29-year-old had a child and a wife, Noor Zahi Salman, but she has remained silent since the entire ordeal began.
Mateen’s ex-wife Sitora Yusufiy however spoke out about what it was like to be married to him and she said he hit her and was mentally ill.
According to the New York Post, public records state Mateen and Yusufiy divorced in July 2011 after marrying in 2009.
Mateen has been married to his new wife, Salman, since at least 2013 and they were raising a three-year-old son.
Since the shooting, Salman has gone into hiding and deleted her social media pages, including Facebook.
The Sun reports Salman was registered as living at the same place as Mateen in St Lucie.
It’s not known whether Salman and Mateen were still together at the time of the shooting and according to the New York Post, she is now registered as living in Rodeo, California, about 40 minutes northeast of San Francisco.
She previously lived in California and Illinois and went to Heald College-Concord in California, a business-career college which is now closed.
Mateen’s father Seddique Mateen, told NBC News his son was angered when he saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child in Miami.
“They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘look at that. In front of my son they are doing that’,” the father said.
The killer’s ex-wife, Yusufiy, told The Washington Post of the horror of being married to Mateen.
“He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished, or something like that,” she said.
“He seemed like a normal human being.”
Around the time of the shooting, Mateen called 911 and pledged his allegiance to Islamic State and told the dispatcher of the horror taking place in the Orlando nightclub.
About 5am he was shot dead by police.
The Telegraph reports Mateen worked as a security guard for G4S in Florida since 2007 and he carried a gun while on duty.
The company did background checks on him in both 2007 and 2013.
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