ORLANDO, Fla. — Co-workers who “ganged up” to tease him about being Muslim prompted the gunman who opened fire at a Florida gay nightclub to pretend he had terrorist ties to get them off his back, according to a letter he wrote his bosses.
In documents released Monday, Omar Mateen said taunting at his job as a security guard in the St. Lucie courthouse led him to say he had connections to terrorists and a mass shooter, but he later told his bosses he made that up, and the FBI determined he was not a threat.
His remarks prompted an FBI investigation in 2013 and caused enough concern with the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office that officials there asked employer G4S Secure Solutions to have him reassigned, away from the courthouse. But in addition to Mateen’s explanation to his bosses that he had made the story up, the documents show the FBI didn’t believe he was a terrorist, and an agent told a sheriff’s office major that he didn’t think Mateen “would go postal or anything like that.”
“I love the United States. The boasting I did it just to satisfy the gang of co-workers who ganged up against me,” Mateen wrote in a letter to his bosses at G4S Secure Solutions, according to the documents released by the sheriff’s office. “I’m 1,000 percent pure American. ... I’m against these terrorists anyone of them.”
