Patience Carter survived the Pulse Nightclub shooting that took the lives of friend Akyra Murray and 48 other people on June, 2016. Now engaged to marry Murray’s brother, she’s as close as anyone could be to the tragedy, but she said she wasn’t surprised when the wife of killer Omar Mateen was acquitted on Friday for an alleged role in the massacre. Carter told The Law&Crime Network that she was pretty sure this was going to be the verdict. She said that since Mateen wasn’t alive (cops shot and killed him), people put the blame on the wife Noor Salman.
Carter voiced serious doubts over whether the defendant was unaware that her husband planned the shooting. It’s unlikely that Salman, who was Mateen’s wife and the mother of his children, would have known nothing, she said. If she was aware of what was going to happen, it was her duty to say something, Carter said.
“I don’t agree that she was a victim,” she said, disagreeing with the defense’s argument.
That said, the prosecutors didn’t show enough evidence proving what Salman knew, and when. The priority, especially at this point in the tragedy, is to move on, remember those who passed away, and help those still suffering from the shooting.
“And after looking at the evidence, it’s still not totally clear, but I think the only way for us to move on and heal is to not focus so much on this, and focus on memorializing and keeping the legacy alive of people that died that night,” she said.
Carter took a critical stance with how media outlets reported Mateen’s motivation for the killing. She overhead him making the 911 call in which he said he wanted the United States to stop bombing his country, and pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Carter said media outlets didn’t vividly focus on what Mateen said in the phone call.
“He said out of his mouth that he was doing this for a specific reason to avenge the people of his country,” she said. Mateen said he was with ISIS, and demanded that America stop bombing his country.
[Screengrab via Law&Crime Network]
