Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Nightclub victims pleaded for help, begged for rescue, Sheriff's Office records show

Shooting continues for 2.5 hours after police and FBI claim it stopped. What's going on???


For 25 minutes, an 18-year-old woman, trapped in a bathroom at Pulse nightclub, talked to an Orange County Sheriff's Office dispatcher. She was wounded, afraid and going numb, she said.

She first lost feeling in her left arm, where she'd been shot, she reported, then, a few minutes later, at 2:34 a.m., she said she could no longer feel her left leg. Two minutes later, she said she was going blind.

She "just keeps pleading" for a rescue, a dispatcher reported at 2:37 a.m. "She does not want to die."

Then, at 2:45 a.m. the phone line went dead. When a dispatcher tried to call her back three minutes later, no one picked up.

That woman's story is in 35 pages of dispatch records released Thursday by the Orange County Sheriff's Office. They give a tick-tock account of what dispatchers at that agency heard and reported during the mass shooting two weeks ago.

Orlando nightclub shooting timeline: Three hours of terror unfold
Orlando nightclub shooting timeline: Three hours of terror unfold
They were released two days after the Orlando Police Department released a transcript of its dispatch traffic during and after the standoff.

Forty-nine people were killed and more than 50 others were injured after a 29-year-old Fort Pierce security guard, Omar Mateen, entered the club with an assault rifle and 9 mm handgun and opened fire about 2 a.m. on June 12.

Orlando nightclub shooting documents released
Orlando nightclub shooting documents released
He was killed in a shootout with Orlando police shortly after 5 a.m., when ten Orlando officers and three deputies opened fire,, OPD's SWAT commander, Mark Canty, said in an interview Thursday.

Two reports of gunfire after 2:30 a.m.

Much of what appears in the Sheriff's Office records is consistent with OPD records, but they differ on one critical detail: When the gunman stopped shooting.

According to the Sheriff's Office records, there were reports of gunfire at 2:30 a.m. and 2:34 a.m.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina has said it ended at 2:18 a.m. until the final barrage began after 5 a.m.

On Thursday, he would not specifically discuss the Sheriff's Office dispatch records. But his earlier statements, he wrote in an email, were based on an FBI timeline and what officers have told him.

"The investigation into this incident is not complete," he added.

Four hostages have told the Orlando Sentinel that they heard gunfire after 2:18 a.m.

The Sheriff's Office records include a report of a gunshot at 2:30 a.m.: "Caller heard another gunshot from the front."

Three-and-a-half minutes later there was another log entry: "Caller .. can hear a male screaming and another gunshot. … Thinks it came from the bathroom but not sure."

Some critics have accused the police department of allowing the standoff to drag on too long. The ordeal began about 2:02 a.m., and the police department reported the gunman dead at 5:17 a.m. after a final gun battle.

Mina has defended his department, saying officers stopped shooting about 2:18 a.m. because Mateen had stopped shooting.

After that, the department stopped treating Mateen as if he were an active shooter, a scenario in which officers typically move toward gunfire and engage the shooter. Instead, they treated him like a barricaded gunman with hostages.

Orlando officers behaved courageously and heroically that night, Mina has said, entering the nightclub while the gunman was still inside and pulling many people to safety.

'People are bleeding out'

As the night progressed, according to the new dispatch records, callers became increasingly desperate, begged for help and warned that people around them were dying.

The 18-year-old woman who went silent after talking to a dispatcher for 25 minutes was one.

There were about 10 other people in the bathroom with her, she told a dispatcher.

"Everyone in the bathroom is groaning in pain," a dispatcher reported her saying. "People are bleeding out."

More than an hour later, at 3:46 a.m., another caller told a dispatcher that his girlfriend was texting him from a bathroom. There were 18 other people in the room with her, he said, two of them dead.

About 45 minutes later, the death count in the bathroom had climbed to four, he told a dispatcher, records show.

'Sounds like an AK'

The first shots were reported about 2:02 a.m., and officers rushed inside and challenged him at 2:08 a.m.

By 2:17 a.m., while Mateen was still blasting away, Sheriff's Office dispatchers were beginning to get a picture of how much damage he was inflicting.

Callers reported that several people had been wounded, that Mateen had barricaded himself in a back room with hostages - some of them wounded - and deputies were calling for shields.

"Sounds like an AK," an apparent reference to an AK-47, a military-style rifle, according to one dispatch entry.

"Shield will not stop rifle fire," someone noted a few seconds later.

At 2:18 deputies were told to "hold hard cover," an order that they should take cover but hold their positions, records show. That's the same time the SWAT team was called out, according to an FBI timeline.

A police negotiator talked to Mateen three times during the standoff, Mina has said, and during those conversations claimed to have explosives, something that prompted the department to revise its tactics again.

The first mention of explosives in Sheriff's Office dispatch records was at 2:51a.m. — when someone "possibly the shooter" — reported them in the nightclub parking lot. One minute later deputies got word from OPD that the shooter was in the bathroom, possibly "wearing a bomb."

The Sheriff's Office bomb squad would later search a car in the parking lot as well as the interior of the club, but found no explosives.

The standoff ended after a shootout with the OPD SWAT team.

Sheriff's Office documents revealed that Mateen died inside the club.

The SWAT team tried to blast its way into the building shortly after 5 a.m., records show, but that attempt failed, so officers rammed the building with an armored vehicle, punching holes in the outside wall of a bathroom near where several hostages were huddled.

The final gun battle began when shots were fired in the north bathroom at 5:14 a.m., according to the police department. The gunman was reported down at 5:17 a.m. The SWAT commander told the Sentinel Mateen was killed in a hallway.

"Bad guy down strapped," OPD dispatch reported.

Looks like swats union contract will not allow them to start before 5 and the city did not want to pay OT.

As the far left liberals say, good thing no one in the nightclub had a gun. Someone might have gotten hurt.

L.W.

"As the night progressed, according to the new dispatch records, callers became increasingly desperate, begged for help and warned that people around them were dying."

I believe this statement proves that the situation wasn't a gunman with hostages, all locked in the men's room, as they've been tryin to sell it.

Can't believe the gunman in a small room with these hostages would allow em to phone out and ask the cops to bust in. He wanted to call everybody on the planet before the grand finale.

Looks like there were a number of unhurt and wounded people in the back half of the club, and the cops wasn't gonna go into the back half to save em.

Sadly, will we ever really know the truth?

Was there only one exit in the entire building? Was Mateen guarding the door?

Why didn't people just leave on their own accord?