The ex-wife of the slain Orlando nightclub shooter described him late Sunday as a mentally and emotionally unstable — and possibly bipolar — spouse who physically abused her during their brief marriage.
Speaking to reporters from her home in Boulder, Colo., Sitora Yusufiy said the couple were together just four months before she fled their Florida home and filed for divorce.
Sitora Yusufiy, the ex-wife of Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen, gives a statement to the media at her more
Yusufiy said she met Omar Mateen online — she didn’t say how long ago they met, but The Washington Post reported Sunday that the couple met about eight years ago.
“In the beginning he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun,” she said. “But then, a few months after we were married, I saw his instability and I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere. That’s when I started worrying about my safety.”
An aspiring policeman, Mateen worked in a center for juvenile delinquents in Fort Pierce, Fla., she said. “He was working up and getting experience to become a police officer.”
She described Mateen as “very short-tempered” and said he would often get into arguments with his parents. “But because, I guess, I was the only one in his life, most of the violence was towards me at that time."
He soon “started abusing me physically, very often, and not allowing me to speak to my family, keeping me hostage from them,” she said.
When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate for things, toward everything.
Yusufiy said she “tried to see the good in him even then, but my family was very tuned-in to what I was going through and decided to visit me and rescue me out of that situation.”
During the “rescue,” Yusufiy said, her family “had to pull me out of his arms.”
She left all her belongings behind, filed a police report and never looked back. Over the next year and a half, she said, they worked through a divorce, she in New Jersey, he in Florida. Since then, she said, she has had no contact with Mateen.
“I have cut him off. I blocked everything. My family actually warned him that if he tried and contact me, they would go to the authorities.”
Asked to explain his violent outburst on Sunday, she suggested, “emotional instability. Sickness. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill — that’s the only explanation that I could give. And he was obviously disturbed, deeply, and traumatized.”
She described Mateen as someone who “did follow religion. He did practice and he had his faith,” she said, but she didn’t explicitly say that his religious beliefs prompted the shooting.
Mateen had “a history with steroids,” she said. “I don’t know if that caused it. I’m sure it had something to do with it.”
But she added, “There was no sign of any of this at all.”
Actual story: Ex-wife: Orlando shooter 'very short-tempered,' violent
Speaking to reporters from her home in Boulder, Colo., Sitora Yusufiy said the couple were together just four months before she fled their Florida home and filed for divorce.
Sitora Yusufiy, the ex-wife of Orlando shooting suspect Omar Mateen, gives a statement to the media at her more
Yusufiy said she met Omar Mateen online — she didn’t say how long ago they met, but The Washington Post reported Sunday that the couple met about eight years ago.
“In the beginning he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun,” she said. “But then, a few months after we were married, I saw his instability and I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere. That’s when I started worrying about my safety.”
An aspiring policeman, Mateen worked in a center for juvenile delinquents in Fort Pierce, Fla., she said. “He was working up and getting experience to become a police officer.”
She described Mateen as “very short-tempered” and said he would often get into arguments with his parents. “But because, I guess, I was the only one in his life, most of the violence was towards me at that time."
He soon “started abusing me physically, very often, and not allowing me to speak to my family, keeping me hostage from them,” she said.
When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate for things, toward everything.
Yusufiy said she “tried to see the good in him even then, but my family was very tuned-in to what I was going through and decided to visit me and rescue me out of that situation.”
During the “rescue,” Yusufiy said, her family “had to pull me out of his arms.”
She left all her belongings behind, filed a police report and never looked back. Over the next year and a half, she said, they worked through a divorce, she in New Jersey, he in Florida. Since then, she said, she has had no contact with Mateen.
“I have cut him off. I blocked everything. My family actually warned him that if he tried and contact me, they would go to the authorities.”
Asked to explain his violent outburst on Sunday, she suggested, “emotional instability. Sickness. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill — that’s the only explanation that I could give. And he was obviously disturbed, deeply, and traumatized.”
She described Mateen as someone who “did follow religion. He did practice and he had his faith,” she said, but she didn’t explicitly say that his religious beliefs prompted the shooting.
Mateen had “a history with steroids,” she said. “I don’t know if that caused it. I’m sure it had something to do with it.”
But she added, “There was no sign of any of this at all.”
Actual story: Ex-wife: Orlando shooter 'very short-tempered,' violent
I think that'd be about 16"
