The commander of the Florida police SWAT team that killed terrorist Omar Mateen in the Orlando attacks Thursday described a "horrific" scene inside the Pulse nightclub that was "nothing like you would ever expect to see."
"Even in law enforcement, you would never expect to see that many people dead and lying on the floor," Mark Canty, who led 44 officers in taking down Mateen, told Brooke Baldwin on CNN. "It is not something we normally find when we go to a call on every day.
"We don't expect to see that kind of bloodshed," Canty said.
Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., had fatally shot 49 people and injured as many as 53 others before SWAT officer killed him in a shootout in the hall between the bathrooms in the gay nightclub.
In calls he made to 911 throughout the shooting, Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, Canty said. He was born in New York to parents from Afghanistan.
Mateen also told dispatchers that he would put bomb vests on four of the as many as 20 hostages he had in two bathrooms, the SWAT commander said.
"I was in the Command Center in the course of the event, so I knew that he was calling 911," Canty said. "What some of the hostages were doing was texting other loved ones and getting some of the independent verification saying that he had the bomb vests.
"Then, we had people on the inside — hostages who were texting to their loved ones that exact same thing, and we were certainly led to believe that he was going to put bomb vests on four people.
"I think he said that he was going to station them in the four corners of the building," he said.
"To maximize casualties?" Baldwin asked.
"Yes," Canty responded.
"You had to take him at his word?"
"Right," he said.
"What's key — and people don’t realize is while we're doing this, we're also rescuing other people," the commander added.
He said officers got at least 12 people out of the club through two dressing rooms before blowing out and ramming through other walls to get to Mateen and the hostages he held in the two bathrooms.
"We had people in there," Canty said. "Then, as they're preparing to breach another wall, another part of the wall, he came out and engaged the officers."
Mateen fired first on the SWAT officers with his AR-15 assault rule in the nightclub's hallway between the bathrooms, Canty said.
Officers then shot Mateen to death. They broke down another wall to get the hostages.
Canty told Baldwin that his officers were in "good spirits" Thursday and that "they’re happy that they could save the number of people we did.
"For most of our officers, this job is a calling — and they do it because they want to save lives," he added. "They want to keep people safe."
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