Gunman joked about Sept. 11 attacks, high school acquaintance says

A high school acquaintance of the gunman in Sunday’s mass shooting in Orlando said Omar Mateen was a “regular dude” until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“He started acting crazy, joking around the fact that 9/11 happened, making plane noises on the school bus and pretending he was slamming into the building,” said Robert Zirkle, who rode the school bus every day with Mateen in Stuart, Fla., 15 years ago.

“He was happy that Americans were dying. He made that very clear. I don’t know if he was always a Muslim radical, but he was excited, hyped up. We were all, like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Zirkle recalled.

Zirkle said he and other students warned Mateen that he needed to stop. “We told him if he didn’t stop making noises, we were going to beat him up.”

Zitkle, who now lives in Tennessee, was a freshman at Martin County High School at the time. Mateen, he said, attended Spectrum Alternative School, a separate public school.

“He was really out there,” he said of Mateen. “He had no friends. He had people who were cordial with him or would ask him how he was doing. Only a few people spoke to him. I was one of the few who would. He was a ‘Seinfeld’ kind of guy.”

—Jennie Jarvie

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