What We Know About the Colorado Springs Shooting
A man wearing what appeared to be body armor opened fire outside a Denver-area high school on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring 14, before he died in a gun battle with police. We know a lot about the shooter’s life, but little about the person he attacked. Here’s what we know so far: In the year 2000, he was arrested in Dallas, Texas, for a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication and sentenced to six months in jail. Two years later, he moved from state to state, often using aliases. He was known to police as a “dissatisfied customer” who was sometimes violent, according to the Houston Chronicle.
In 2010, the police chief of the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park told The Associated Press that he was told that Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, who had converted to Islam and changed his last name to Mateen, was a “very good man,” who made a “good attempt” at life and was “nice” in the community.
In 2011, the FBI listed Mateen as living in the Dallas area, in his 20s, a Muslim American living in the Dallas area who had converted to Islam and changed his name to Mateen before 2011. In the past year, he stopped using the name Omar Mir Seddique Mateen and used the name Muhammad Jamal Khattala, a name he changed in early 2016.
And the man behind the name change said he changed his name to protect his identity because he “wanted to find employment,” his public Facebook page said. He said in one of his posts that he “changed my name to protect my identity… because I wanted to find employment.”
According to court documents in his criminal case, from June 2008 to March 2011, Mateen had an assault on a man who was drunk and “came on to me” and “pulled his pants down and started grabbing and choking me,” a detective wrote in the case’s summary. He “struck me multiple times across the face with his hands causing lacerations and contusions.”
In an interview that was recorded and made public in 2011, he said he was a “very bad person” and was “very, very angry” when he was first arrested. But he said he was not a terrorist or a terrorist plot.
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