Did Pulse nightclub shooter’s wife help in the attack? Jury weighs her fate

A jury is now deliberating the fate of Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen who is accused of aiding her husband in a bloody attack that left 49 people dead and dozens injured.

The 12-member jury will weigh whether to convict Salman, 31, of obstruction of justice and of aiding and abetting Mateen in providing material support to a foreign terror organization, Islamic State.

In closing arguments early Wednesday, Salman’s attorneys said Mateen had no reason to involve his wife in his plan to carry out the June 12, 2016, mass shooting.

“Why would he tell her?” defense attorney Charles Swift asked. “I cannot think of an earthly reason for it. I cannot think of one. What could she help him with?”

A courtroom sketch shows Noor Salman, left, talking with defense attorney Linda Moreno during jury selection in her trial.

(Charles Treadwell / Orlando Sentinel )

Swift and fellow defense attorney Linda Moreno repeated the same advice for the 12 men and woman who will decide Salman’s fate: “Use your common sense.”

“Why would Omar Mateen confide in Noor, a woman he clearly had no respect for?” Moreno asked. “She was not his peer, she was not his partner and she was not his confidante.”

But prosecutors responded that the government is not obligated to prove that Salman was an extremist like her husband, or knew where or specifically how he planned to strike.

Prosecutors said the government need only show that her actions helped him to carry out the attack, which Mateen claimed was in support of Islamic State.

The trial, prosecutor Sara Sweeney said, comes down to “what the defendant knew and what she did.”

“She does not have to be his equal in the attack, and in fact she is not,” Sweeney said.

Indeed, Sweeney argued that the Pulse nightclub was not Mateen’s intended target.

Initially, he had hoped to strike at the nearby Disney Springs resort, the prosecution said.

“The target of that terrorist attack was not the Pulse nightclub. ... The target of his attack was Disney,” Sweeney told jurors.

Sweeney’s argument echoed cellphone evidence that placed Mateen at Disney Springs, near Epcot, and at EVE Orlando, another downtown-area club, in the hours leading up to his attack at Pulse.

But Sweeney added a new detail: She showed the jury photos of a baby stroller and doll that were found in the car that Mateen drove to the nightclub.

Mateen initially planned to conceal his gun in the stroller in order to get it into Disney Springs, Sweeney argued. The stroller, she noted, was not the right size for Mateen’s then-3-year-old son.

Salman’s defense seized on the admission that Mateen didn’t know until soon before the attack where he would strike: “That doesn’t make it less tragic. Not in any way, shape or form. It’s a horrible, random, senseless killing by a monster. But it wasn’t preplanned,” Swift said.

Dozens of witnesses testified over eight days during the trial. Salman chose to not testify in her own defense.

To prove Salman aided and abetted Mateen, prosecutors had to show jurors that Salman knew of her husband’s plan and helped him prepare. They pointed to Salman’s statements to FBI agents in the hours after the attack, in which agents claim she confessed.

She described a chilling scene: sitting alongside her husband as he drove around Pulse for 20 minutes during a family trip on June 8, 2016, and talked about attacking the club. But according to experts for both sides, the trip didn’t occur as Salman described it.

FBI Special Agent Richard Fennern testified that most of the couple’s time that day was accounted for with receipts and cellphone records. They visited the Florida Mall, a falafel restaurant and went to a Kissimmee mosque, Fennern said. But Salman’s phone, he said, “had never been near the Pulse nightclub.”

Salman’s lawyers have argued the confession is false and criticized agents for not recording the interviews. On Wednesday, Sweeney argued that other elements of Salman’s FBI statements were corroborated, such as a trip to City Place in Palm Beach, a trip to Disney Springs and his extravagant spending.

“The fact that these things are ultimately corroborated shows you that the defendant did not give a false confession,” Sweeney said.

During the trial, jurors watched video of Salman standing with her husband as he bought ammunition and jewelry in the weeks before the attack, racking up substantial credit card debt. Jurors were also told that he sought to make her a beneficiary on his accounts — evidence, they say, that the couple was preparing for his death.

The government also pointed to text messages that Salman sent Mateen on June 11 about 6 p.m., eight hours before the massacre, referencing a friend of Mateen’s who is referred to in court documents only as “Nemo.”

“If ur mom calls say nimo invited you out and noor wants to stay home,” she wrote, using a different spelling for the friend’s name. “She asked where you were xoxo. Love you.”

Prosecutors say the texts show Salman helped her husband concoct a cover story to tell his parents. Defense lawyers say the texts show Mateen lied to his wife about where he was going that night.

Evidence suggests Mateen wavered on his target over the several hours before he walked inside Pulse and began firing.

Records showed Mateen arrived at Disney Springs about 10 p.m. on June 11, 2016. At 10:27 p.m., he searched for “disney springs” while his phone placed him there. Forty minutes later, he searched for “disney world.” Cell towers placed him near Epcot at 12:22 a.m. on June 12.

From there, Mateen searched for “downtown orlando nightclubs.” His Google results showed Pulse and EVE Orlando.

He got directions to EVE and drove toward Interstate 4, records show. Mateen was near EVE at 12:55 a.m., but drove away six minutes later. At 1:01 a.m., Mateen searched again for “downtown orlando nightclubs” and got directions to Pulse. He drove south, passing the club between 1:12 a.m. and 1:16 a.m.

He drove around the area south of downtown until 1:33 a.m. and was “in the immediate vicinity of Pulse” when he searched for directions back to EVE. He started driving toward downtown again, then turned around. By 1:37 a.m., he was back at Pulse.

Twenty-five minutes later, he started shooting.

Tziperman Lotan and Torralva write for the Orlando Sentinel.

UPDATES:

2 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from the trial.

This article was originally published at 12 p.m.