Club-shooting 911 calls ask why police waited

 In this June 12, 2016 file photo, law enforcement officials work at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., following the a mass shooting.
In this June 12, 2016 file photo, law enforcement officials work at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., following the a mass shooting.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Friends and relatives of the people trapped inside a Florida nightclub during a mass shooting that killed 49 patrons are heard on 911 tapes asking police dispatchers why it was taking so long to rescue their loved ones.

Audio recordings of 911 calls released Tuesday by the Orange County sheriff's office reveal the mounting frustration of friends and family members who were texting, calling and video-chatting with trapped patrons of the Pulse nightclub where Omar Mateen opened fire in June.

"My son was shot in the club. ... He is still in the bathroom. He is bleeding, and he got shot and nobody is going in for him," said one caller to 911, almost three hours after the shooting began. "Nobody is doing anything for him."

The dispatcher told him that a SWAT team was about to go into the nightclub.

More than an hour and a half after the shooting started, a man called dispatchers for a second time, frustrated that his ex-girlfriend hadn't been rescued from a restroom where she was trapped with almost 20 others, including two dead people.

"People are shot and dead. ... Are you guys sending anybody there?" the man said. "They are all scared to death, and they all think they are going to die."

The caller then said that his ex-girlfriend was texting that the gunman was there. The dispatcher told him to text back to ask if his ex-girlfriend meant the gunman was in the restroom or in the club in general.

"She's not answering," he said. He waited more than five minutes on the line with the dispatcher and got no response from his ex-girlfriend. Then the dispatcher told him she needed to free up the line.

The sheriff's office handled the overflow 911 calls when Orlando Police Department dispatchers became inundated. The recordings show that sheriff's dispatchers mostly got busy signals when they tried to transfer calls back to the Police Department.

The Orlando Police Department has yet to release its recordings of the 911 calls. About two dozen news media companies are suing for access to those public records, as well as the communications between Mateen and the Orlando Police Department, during which authorities say Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.

The media groups argue that the recordings will help the public evaluate the police response in the massacre, but the city of Orlando claims that the recordings are exempt under Florida public-records law and that the FBI insists that releasing them may disrupt the ongoing investigation.

Mateen was killed by a police SWAT team after he shot at the officers, ending a standoff that had lasted for more than three hours. In addition to the fatalities, 53 clubgoers were hospitalized.

A Section on 08/31/2016

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