Orlando gay nightclub shooter Omar Mateen reportedly called a local TV news station while he was carrying out the worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history.
Matthew Gentili, an overnight producer at Orlando’s News 13, was fielding calls early Sunday morning about reports of a shooting in the downtown area.
“I was receiving phone calls from viewers saying, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening? What’s happening in Orlando?” Gentili said in a Tuesday interview with his own news station.
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Police said Mateen opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub just after 2 a.m., killing 49 people and wounding another 53.
“It was at 2:45 a.m. when I had just received the phone call of someone claiming to be the Orlando shooter,” Gentili said in the interview. “I answered the phone as I always do: ‘News 13, this is Matt.’ And on the other end, I heard, ‘Do you know about the shooting?’”
The producer apparently told the caller that he was aware of the reports of a shooting.
“I’m the shooter. It’s me. I am the shooter,” the caller reportedly said. “He did it for ISIS, and he started speaking Arabic,” Gentili claimed.
Gentili said the caller began to speak quickly and asked the person on the other end of the phone to speak English.
READ MORE: FBI looking at whether Omar Mateen led secret life as a gay man
“I did it for ISIS. I did it for the Islamic State,” the caller is claimed to have said.
Authorities said Mateen had professed his allegiance to the Islamic State in a 911 call during Sunday’s attack.
According to News 13, the station producer was interviewed by the FBI after his shift and wouldn’t confirm whether Gentili spoke to Mateen. However, the station claims to have traced the number from the caller back to Mateen.
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