Harrowing hours inside Orlando club, then police acted

Last call had come and gone at Pulse. Bartenders were preparing close up one of Orlando's most popular gay nightclubs for the night.

Yet the dance floor remained crowded and the music thumping as a gunman entered.

At 2 a.m. Florida time, Omar Mateen and a uniformed officer working off-duty at the club engaged in a gunfight near an entrance.

The lucky ones were near an exit or somehow found a way to flee immediately. But the club was designed for congregation, not escapes.

'It's a very, very small space,” Alex Choy, a former club employee, told the Miami Herald. 'If there was any type of shooting, it wouldn't take much to get everyone. Very close range.”

More officers arrived at the club, pulling people to safety and engaging Mateen in a gunbattle.

By 2:09 a.m., someone posted a frantic message to Pulse's Facebook page: 'Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

Mateen retreated to a restroom. Details that emerged from authorities Monday remained sketchy, but it appeared some patrons were already seeking refuge in the bathroom, and at that point became his hostages.

And so began a three-hour odyssey, with clubgoers desperately texting for help, police talking over the phone with a gunman they described as calm and, ultimately, authorities breaking through a concrete wall to save lives and stop Mateen.

Police say Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., armed with two guns, killed 49 people and wounded dozens more early Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, described as a terror attack. Almost all his victims were in their 20s and 30s, and overwhelmingly Hispanic - it was 'Latin night” at the club.

Of the 48 names of the dead released by late Monday, none appeared to have obvious Iowa ties.

Clubgoer Chris Hansen, who'd just moved to Florida a couple of months earlier, told the Associated Press he had escaped through the back of the venue by crawling on his elbows and knees.

'After everybody was out, the shooting was still going and the cops were still yelling, ‘Go! Go! Clear the area, clear the area!'” he said.

'I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?'” So I just dropped down. I just said, ‘Please, please, please, I want to make it out.' And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don't get shot.”

Within minutes of the shooting, police vehicles and a SWAT team descended on the club. At the same time, patrons began documenting the horror on their social media accounts. Some were still trapped, but giving real-time updates on the mayhem.

After news of the violence spread, friends and family members began the desperate search for news of their loved ones.

Standing outside the dance club early Sunday, Mina Justice told the Associated Press she was trying to contact her son, Eddie, and feared the worst.

He had texted her earlier, she said, telling her that he ran into a restroom with others to hide from the gunman.

'He's coming,” his text said. That was at 2:39 a.m.

Then the young man wrote: 'I'm gonna die.”

(Eddie Justice was confirmed as one of the casualties early Monday.)

For hours during the standoff, the gunfire stopped. And during that period, Mateen called 911 to talk with police.

Mina said the gunman was 'cool and calm” and did not demand much.

'We were doing most of the asking,” Mina said.

During the call, Mateen pledged allegiance to Islamic State terrorists, But he also referenced the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, according to federal law enforcement officials, who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity.

But it was his comments suggesting he would kill the hostages - along with references to a bomb belt and explosives - that caused police to act when they did.

'There was a timeline given and we believed that there was imminent loss of life that we needed to prevent,” Mina said. 'It's a tough decision to make, knowing that people's lives will be placed in danger by that, our officers' lives would be placed in danger.”

As 5 a.m. Sunday approached, Mina said he decided to make a move.

Police used a Bearcat armored vehicle to bust a hole in an exterior wall leading into a restroom, one on the opposite side of the club from where Mateen had holed up, Mina said.

The people inside that second restroom escaped through the hole.

But then Mateen emerged from the hole, too, and engaged in a brief gunbattle with 11 police officers and three sheriff's deputies.

At 5:53 a.m., Orlando police posted a bulletin: 'Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.”

But it was not until some 17 hours later that all the bodies of the victims had been removed from Pulse.

John McGlothlen of The Gazette contributed to this report.