Omar Mateen
Orlando police have released a transcript of the 911 call where Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and said the attack was retribution for airstrikes against the terrorist group.


Comment: Another source of the transcript may be found here. Now, according to the official transcript....


The first phone call comes at 2:35 a.m., when the shooter says "this is Mateen. I want to let you know I'm in Orlando and I did the shooting."

He then refuses to say his full name, says that he killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in response to U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria, and says that he should be called "soldier of god."

A crisis negotiator in later phone calls at 2:48 a.m. and 2:56 a.m. tried to get information about what weapons Mateen had and whether there was anyone else with him.

Mateen, who said that Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was his "homeboy," claimed that he had a bomb-rigged car outside the gay club, though no such explosives were found.

He makes contradictory comments about wearing a suicide vest, first saying that he had one like "what they used in France" but then claiming that it was undetectable by bomb-sniffing dogs and later saying that it was a vest "to go out to a wedding."

A second negotiator's attempting to talk to Mateen refers to him by his first name, and the suspect respond that the precise event that led to his rampage was the killing of ISIS leader Abu Wahid in May.

The last phone call ended at 3:25 a.m., with the shooter saying he was annoyed by the police calls and answering questions by saying "no. no. no. no. no. no. no."

A police tactical team would end up waiting until 5:05 a.m. before storming the building and killing Mateen.

The 911 call and dozens of other calls made by civilians to authorities the morning of the shooting were released after a lawsuit from media groups claiming that they were necessary to evaluate police response to the massacre.

The city of Orlando had originally opposed the release and said that the calls would not fall under public records laws, but the FBI, which is investigating the shooting, said that the calls would not impact its case.