Tue 14 Jun 2016 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
If you want to check back through our coverage as the tragedy in Orlando has unfolded click here. 9.00AM Wednesday NZT update: It has emerged that the wife of the Orlando gunman tried to talk her husband out of carrying out the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. According to officers familiar with the case, Noor Zahi Salman told the FBI that she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster. She also told them she once drove him to Pulse because he wanted to scope it out. Law enforcement officials say she is now cooperating with investigators and they are considering filing charges against Noor because she failed to tell them this information before her husband carried out the mass shooting. The FBI has brought in therapy dogs to help console the families of the victims. The Walt Disney Co. has donated $1million to help support the victims of the shooting. The City of Orlando has set up the One Orlando Fund to support organisations involved in the recovery effort. 10PM Tuesday NZT update: A huge twilight vigil in Orlando. Another huge vigil has been held in an Orlando park (see above). As the sun set a bell was tolled 49 times, once for each person killed in the attack. The last bodies have been removed from Pulse gay nightclub, the scene of the worst mass shooting in US history. A survivor of the Pulse, Orlando, nightclub massacre has described how he had to climb over the dead bodies of his friends to escape. Norman Casiano suffered four gunshots in the back and says the gunman laughed as he slaughtered his victims in the crowded club. Casiano, who has been released from hospital, says he threw himself to the floor and crawled to the club's toilets as soon as he heard gunfire. He huddled in the toilet area which was packed with other terrified patrons. He says a badly-wounded man staggered into the toilet area and begged to be let into the stall where others were hiding but there wasn't room for him. The gunman then entered and fired a final shot into the man. Casiano says the huddled patrons begged for their lives but the gunman held his gun high over the stall wall and sprayed bullets into the group, laughing as he did so. A man whose home is beside the club says he saw people running for their lives from a club exit, screaming out for their friends who had not yet made it out. Another man who escaped the club has described how he was helping a badly-injured man on the street when it was realised there were no more ambulances available. He says police commandeered a ute and asked him to lie flat in the vehicle's tray and bear-hug the man all the way to hospital. An emergency room surgeon has posted a picture of the now blood-stained shoes he has been wearing as he and other surgeons and support staff worked to stabilise victims of the shooting. He has posted: "These are my work shoes from Saturday night. They are brand new, not even a week old. I came to work this morning and saw these in the corner my call room, next to the pile of dirty scrubs. I had forgotten about them until now. On these shoes, soaked between its fibers, is the blood of 54 innocent human beings. I don't know which were straight, which were gay, which were black, or which were hispanic. What I do know is that they came to us in wave upon wave of suffering, screaming, and death. And somehow, in that chaos, doctors, nurses, technicians, police, paramedics, and others, performed super human feats of compassion and care. This blood, which poured out of those patients and soaked through my scrubs and shoes, will stain me forever. In these Rorschach patterns of red I will forever see their faces and the faces of those that gave everything they had in those dark hours. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done. Some of that work will never end. And while I work I will continue to wear these shoes. And when the last patient leaves our hospital, I will take them off, and I will keep them in my office. I want to see them in front of me every time I go to work. For on June 12, after the worst of humanity reared its evil head, I saw the best of humanity of come fighting right back. I never want to forget that night." Dr. Joshua Corsa M.D, EMT-P OrlandoRegionalMedicalCenter Senior Resident, Department of Surgery Toronto, Seoul, Brisbane, Mexico City and Belfast are just some more of the places around the world where vigils of solidarity and respect have been held. 6PM Tuesday NZT update: A couple killed in the Orlando gay nightclub shooting were planning to get married but now their families are now planning a joint funeral. 22-year-old Juan Ramon Guerrero and his boyfriend 32-year-old Christopher “Drew” Leinonen had been dating for two years and now the couple will be buried side-by-side after having died over the weekend. Guerrero’s older sister Ayram told Time magazine “It’s a little comforting that they died together.” Her father Juan Ramon Guerrero, who shares his son’s name, said that he thinks this is what his son would have wanted. “I don’t care what the people think. I don’t care,” he said. Ayram Guerrero added “If it’s not a funeral, they were going to have a wedding together.” The family will still be celebrating their son’s birthday, Juan Ramon was to turn 23 in a few days time. “My wife will cook all the food he likes. He was a beautiful kid, a hard worker, friendly, sweet person. I lost part of my life." 5PM Tuesday NZT update: The Orlando gunman’s father has condemned the actions of his son but in a video he posted on Facebook, he appears to suggest that it is for God to give punishment to gay people. The Guardian has posted a video of Seddique Mateen, Omar Mateen’s father speaking in Dari, the variety of Persian language spoken in Afghanistan, that he posted on Facebook shortly after a phone interview with the news outlet. In the video, according to a translation from The Guardian, Mateen senior addresses the people of Afghanistan and says “I don’t know what made him [do this], I have no idea, I had no idea that he felt resentful in his heart and had gone to the gay [he uses the derogatory word hamjensbazi] club and killed men and women there. “I am very sad and I’ve announced this to the American people as well. Why did he do this act during this holy month of Ramadan. “On the topic of being hamjensbazi, punishment and the things that they do, God will give the punishment. This is not the issue for a follower of God and he [Omar] that did this has greatly saddened me. I wanted you to know this. God give all youth complete health to keep the real path of the holy religion of Islam in mind.” During the brief interview prior to the video being posted, Mateen senior told The Guardian that his son - who was born in the US - was an American who did not identify with the Afghan heritage of his family. He described the shooting as an “unbelievable act” and says his son “never showed any signs of mental illness or links to extremist groups”. “No father or family should ever have to go through this kind of pain” he told The Guardian reporter. As Omar Mateen was inside Pulse nightclub, and 20 minutes after he had begun to shoot, he called 911 and pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State and to the Boston Marathon bombers. Mateen senior also spoke of the incident he had earlier told NBC New reporters in which his son “got very angry” when he saw two men kissing while he was out with his wife and son. “But that was a couple of months ago and he never talked about it afterwards,” he told The Guardian, downplaying his earlier comments. “I don’t think that incident would trigger this kind of violent reaction.” 2PM: Tuesday NZT update: The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that at least four regular customers at Pulse nightclub, where the mass shooting took place, say gunman Omar Mateen was often seen at the club and even messaged one gay man on and off for a year on a gay chat app. Customer Ty Smith told the news outlet "Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent.” Smith says he had seen Mateen at the club at least a dozen times. "We didn't really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times. He told us he had a wife and child.” Cord Cedeno is also a Pulse regular who told the Sentinel he had seen Mateen in the club, “It was definitely him. He'd come in for years, and people knew him.” Another man Chris Callen says he had witnessed violent outbursts from the gunman on previous occasions. Orlando Police Chief John Mina told Orlando Sentinel he had no information related to these sightings. Kevin West, also a club regular, says that Mateen messaged him through a gay chat app off and on for a year, although the two never met. West says he saw Mateen enter the club on the night of the shooting. NOON Tuesday NZT update: Journalist John Sutter of CNN has published his impressions of being in an Orlando gay venue the night after the massacre. Click here. Britain's Daily Mail has produced what seems to be the best and most complete backgrounders on many of the people killed in the attack. Click here. One of the survivors ot the New Orleans arson The Orlando massacre has bought back painful memories of he death of thirty two people at a gay bar in New Orleans in 1973. The UpStairs Lounge was located on the second floor of an old building on the edge of the French Quarter. An unknown person or persons doused the street entrance of the building plus the stairs up to the gay bar with lighter fluid, lit it and rang the doorbell. When the locked door was opened flames exploded into the bar. There were no effective exits and thirty two people died with many more severely burned and injured. A small but defiant parade through the French Quarter yesterday acknowledged the deaths in Orlando. Hundreds of people have gathered outside New York's Stonewall Inn, the location of a protest action by persecuted gay people in 1969 which was a significant moment in the birth of the world-wide gay rights movement. Bunches of flowers are stacking up on the footpath against the building. A crowd of hundreds has sung John Lennon's Imagine at a Miami Beach vigil. Thousands gather on Castro Street, SF Thousands of people gathered at San Francisco's Harvey Milk Plaza on Castro Street blocking traffic with their sheer numbers then marching to SF city Hall. Milk was a gay politician who worked on Castro street and was shot to death at city hall in 1978 by a homophobic fellow-politician. A gay journalist being interviewed has stormed off the set of a current affairs programme in Britain after the show's presenters persistently downplayed the clear connection between homosexuality and the Orlando attack. Until emergency services arrived dazed and shocked patrons who had managed to get out of the building had to take care of their own wounded. Stories are emerging of courage and improvisation such as the nursing student who ripped off his t-shirt and used it as a tourniquet on a man with two gunshot wounds. Then he helped the man stagger further away to safety.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 14th June 2016 - 11:04am