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Fair Killer may have local ties
N.Y. Post says Orlando shooter once lived in Salisbury
Omar Mateen — the 29-year-old man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., last Sunday in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history — may have lived for a time in Salisbury.
The New York Post, citing an unnamed Salisbury resident, reported that he lived at 44 Land Lane for part of his childhood. The home is behind Bowling Green Elementary, in the East Meadow School District.
Mateen listed his birthplace as the Queens side of New Hyde Park on a change-of-name petition that was first obtained by The Guardian. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Mateen’s family moved to Port St. Lucie, Fla., in 1991, when he was 4, but the Post reported that the family left Salisbury when he was 9.
Leon Campo, East Meadow's superintendent, said that administrators have searched their records, but found no evidence that Mateen ever attended local schools. Noting the reports that he left the area as a 4-year-old, Campo said that his family might have moved just before he would have been enrolled in kindergarten at Bowling Green.
Helen Meittinis, who has been a kindergarten classroom assistant at the school on Stewart Avenue for nearly 25 years and a member of the Bowling Green PTA for 33 years, said she had no recollection of Mateen or his family.
“That’s a lot of years, a lot of kids and a lot of parents, so someone could’ve slipped through the cracks,” Meittinis said, “but I have a decent memory when it comes to the kids. If they did live in Salisbury, it couldn’t have been for a very long time.”
Meittinis, who lives less than half a mile from Land Lane, said that the home’s current residents have been there for several years. Nassau County property records indicate that the home was most recently sold in November 2004. Prior to that, Meittinis said, one of her friends lived in the house.
Before her friend — whom she did not name — moved into the home about 22 years ago, Meittinis said, the house was not well kept. “It had to be a rental at the time … I’ve known all of the people who’ve lived on Land Lane. None of the neighbors that I spoke with knew anything about them or that they were there,” she added, referring to Mateen and his family.
She expressed concern for residents of the neighborhood, noting that members of the media and others have congregated near the home since the Post and the Daily News reported the address. “The majority of the neighborhood is appalled by this attention we’re getting here,” she added.
Emily Mervosh, a 24-year-old Salisbury resident who lives less than a mile from Land Lane, said that when she heard the news that Mateen might have once lived in her community, her greatest concern was for the safety of LGBTQ and Muslim residents. She said she hopes they all feel safe and welcome in the community.
Leaders at the largest mosque in the region, Westbury’s Islamic Center of Long Island, said they have not faced any backlash. Dr. Faroque Ahmad Khan, an ICLI trustee who has been a member of the mosque since the property on Brush Hollow Road was purchased in 1984, said he did not recognize Mateen’s family name, had never met him and did not believe he and his family members were part of the congregation. Because ICLI has a strong outreach program and is active in the community, he said he was confident that residents know that that ICLI condemns the murders.
“As the news continues to come through, I think we will see that this was a disturbed young man,” Khan said. “This is a hate crime — it has nothing to do with religion. We are deeply saddened, like everyone else.”
Noting that he is a physician, Khan said that everything he had read about Mateen suggested that he had a serious mental disorder. Khan added that it was tragic that someone with such uncontrolled rage had legal access to dangerous weapons.
Rice pointed out that Mateen was using an AR-15 military-style assault rifle — the same type of weapon used in mass shootings at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif.; at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.; at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., among others.
“These kinds of guns aren’t used for sport or self-defense,” she said. “They are weapons of war, designed to inflict massive casualties in a short amount of time, and there is absolutely no reason why they should be sold to civilians.”
Rice said that she had cosponsored legislation to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban and to ban the sale of the high-capacity ammunition feeding devices that allow for such deadly rates of fire. Referring to the National Rifle Association, she added, “I don’t care how much money extremists like the NRA spend to defeat these bills — the American people want to see action, and I’ll keep fighting to get these common-sense measures passed before we all have to turn on the TV and see another one of our public spaces turned into a scene of unimaginable horror.”
Khan said that before the Orlando shooting took place, ICLI members supported stricter gun control in New York state. He said that 250 congregants signed petitions sponsored by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence in favor of safe storage laws the Nassau County Legislature is considering.
