FORT PIERCE, Fla. (CN) - Victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando filed a federal complaint in Florida, accusing the shooter's wife and his employer of standing by idly as he showed ever more alarming signs that he was planning a terrorist attack.
Though Omar Mateen appeared unhinged and preoccupied with violent thoughts, G4S Secure Solutions kept him employed as a security officer and did nothing to revoke his professional license to carry firearms, the lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida alleges.
Mateen's wife, Noor Salman, who is facing criminal charges for aiding and abetting Mateen, accompanied him on trips to "scout out" the Orlando club and purchase ammunition, the lawsuit alleges. She never reported Mateen to police despite knowing he had been watching Muslim extremist recruiting videos and was plotting terrorist activity, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs, including several surviving victims and seven estates of those fatally wounded in the massacre, filed the lawsuit in Florida federal court early Wednesday. They list counts for negligent hiring and retention on the part of G4S PLC and G4S Secure Solutions, and civil conspiracy on the part of Salman. Claims for wrongful death are included against both Salman and the G4S defendants.
Mateen's June 2016 rampage at the Orlando gay club left forty-nine victims dead and more than fifty others wounded. It is widely considered to be the worst single-shooter massacre in modern U.S. history.
Mateen, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack, was shot and killed in a standoff with police.
According to the lawsuit, there were obvious signs, dating back nearly a decade, that Mateen was too unstable to carry firearms, and was unfit for employment as an armed security guard.
The lawsuit cites a 2007 incident in which Mateen purportedly made a comment about bringing a gun to class while attending a corrections officer training academy. As was previously reported by Courthouse News, Mateen was expelled from the academy, with a local warden calling his comments "at best extremely disturbing."
G4S hired Mateen in 2007 and allowed him to secure a Class G firearms license for professional use, in spite of his unsettling dismissal from the prison guard academy, according to the lawsuit.
The company informed the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (a Florida agency in charge of issuing gun licenses) that Mateen's employment-screening psychological assessment was completed by a Dr. Carol Nudelman. However, in a public statement following the shooting, Nudelman denied ever evaluating Mateen and said that she was not even working with G4S in Florida at the time the assessment was supposedly executed.
Nudelman called Mateen's psychiatric evaluation a "false document," according to the lawsuit.
G4S has since conceded that Nudelman was not involved in the Mateen assessment, and that her name appeared on it due to a "clerical error." The State of Florida in late 2016 fined G4S for falsely listing Nudelman's name on more than 1,500 forms over a ten-year period, the lawsuit notes.
Aside from botching Mateen's employment screening, the lawsuit claims, G4S failed to take action when Mateen's disturbing behavior continued in the course of his job.