Omar Mateen. (MySpace)
Chilling 911 calls made by Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, in which he pledges allegiance to ISIS after killing 49 people and wounding 53 others, have been released by Orlando Police.
The calls were released after a judge ordered them to be made public. Federal investigators had previously said the audio should be withheld from the public, but did release transcripts of the calls.
In the first call, Mateen says, “Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [said in Arabic]. I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.” He is then asked his name, and responds, “My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.”
You can listen to the calls below. The first call begins at the 5 minute mark of the audio:
Mateen’s first call was made at 2:35 a.m. to a 911 operator while he was inside Pulse. He was later killed by police during a raid on the club.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Office previously released 911 calls made to its dispatch center during the Pulse shooting. You can listen to those calls here.
The city of Orlando has more than 200 other calls from the night of the shooting, including some from inside the club, but Circuit Judge Margaret Schreiber has said she will listen to those before releasing them. The city says the calls depict suffering and shouldn’t be made public because they are exempt from the state’s freedom of information laws, WFTV reports.
