Orlando: The wife of Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, the gunman who shot 49 people dead and injured another 53 at an Orlando gay nightclub, was aware of his plans for the attack and could soon be charged in connection with the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
A federal grand jury had been convened and could charge Omar Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, as early as Wednesday, News agency Reuters reported quoting a law enforcement source said on Tuesday.
“It appears she had some knowledge of what was going on,” said U.S. Senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which received a briefing on the attack on Tuesday.
“She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information,” King told CNN.
Salman, Mateen's second wife, has been cooperating with various law enforcement agencies. The couple has been married since 2011. They have a 3-year-old son.
Salman told the FBI she had noticed changes in her husband's behavior and tried to dissuade him from doing anything violent, the official said.
Earlier CNN quoted a source saying FBI investigators don't believe Noor Salman was a co-conspirator in the attack that killed 49 people Sunday morning at Pulse.
The couple lived in Fort Pierce, Florida, about an hour from the club.
FoxNews.com, citing an FBI source, said prosecutors were seeking to charge Mateen’s wife, Salman, as an accessory to 49 counts of murder and 53 counts of attempted murder and failure to notify law enforcement about the pending attack and lying to federal agents.
NBC News said Salman told federal agents she tried to talk her husband out of carrying out the attack. But she also told the FBI she once drove him to the Pulse nightclub because he wanted to scope it out, the network said.
A former wife of Mateen, who was a security guard, has said he was mentally unstable and beat her. The ex-spouse, Sitora Yusufiy, said she fled their home after four months of marriage.
Obama denounced Donald Trump for his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, joining fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in portraying the Republican presidential candidate as unfit for the White House.
