The man who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at an Orlando nightclub on June 12 had purchased three plane tickets to San Francisco for after the shooting, federal officials revealed Tuesday.
Omar Mateen had apparently planned on traveling with his wife and child to the suburb of Rodeo where Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Zalman, grew up. Other than that, federal agents remained tight-lipped about Mateen’s travel plans and did not offer any additional theories on why he may have purchased the tickets.
Was Mateen planning to survive the attack? His actions and statements at the time of the shooting suggest not. Perhaps the tickets were purchased before his deadly plans were made, but that hardly squares with the feds’ belief that the massacre was orchestrated well in advance.
Whatever the case, Tuesday’s news has sent chills down the spines of many Bay Area residents.
Read more about the recent revelations here.
Image Credit: Flickr User andrei_dimofte, https://flic.kr/p/4q6QXM via (CC BY 2.0)