Nine years after a gunman opened fire in the Orlando LGBTQ nightclub Pulse, killing 49 people and wounding 53, survivor Maritza Gomez is preparing herself to enter the former club for the first time since that night.
So is Christine Leinonen, whose 32-year-old son Christopher (known to many by his nickname, Drew) bled to death on the club’s dance floor after entering the club that night with his boyfriend, Juan, who also suffered fatal wounds. Christopher, a licensed mental health counselor and Dance Dance Revolution fan, sustained nine gunshot wounds — four to the back of his legs, five to his chest area, according to his mom.
On June 12, 2016, Orlando became the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history at the time — or that’s the line that was reiterated ad nauseam on national news. Here, in this blue pocket of what was then a purple state, the tragedy felt more intimate. Not a statistic, but a devastating loss that disproportionately affected the city’s vibrant LGBTQ+ community, Latinos and people of color.
It was Latin Night, and the club was packed with people who, as survivors and loved ones often say today, “just wanted to dance.”
A permanent memorial to commemorate the lives of the shooting victims and survivors has been years in the making, but is yet to come to fruition. One of the former club owners, Barbara Poma, set up a nonprofit within a month of the shooting to build a memorial. But that nonprofit, the OnePulse Foundation, ultimately shuttered in disgrace at the end of 2023 after raising millions of dollars from public and private donors, without ever breaking ground.
City officials moved to purchase the site of the former Pulse nightclub from Poma, her husband Rosario, and their business partner for $2 million in October 2023, just months before OnePulse’s dissolution.
Citing financial constraints (later revealed to be financial mismanagement), OnePulse declared it would be unable to complete the memorial project and abandoned it. Poma had left the organization by that time, after collecting a six-figure salary as its founder and former CEO. With its dissolution, the nonprofit left Orange County taxpayers with a $51,000 unpaid property tax bill, to boot.
After taking over the memorial project from OnePulse, Orlando leaders set up an advisory committee of survivors, victims’ loved ones, and other stakeholders to come up with an appropriate memorial design concept that would honor victims and survivors.
Following months of meetings, the city unveiled the committee’s preferred design concept in February — a sleek, colorful, modern approach, created in collaboration with two local design and architectural firms. The proposed design, to be located at the site of the former club, would incorporate a visitors pavilion, a rainbow prism plaza, a survivors wall, and a reflection pool built at the former location of the club’s dance floor, among other elements.
The city plans for the memorial — slated for completion by the end of 2027 — to be open 24/7 and free to the public. City officials have cited an estimated cost of roughly $12 million for the project altogether, at least $7.5 million of which the city plans to contribute through general revenue funds.
The city, mindful of its expenditures, has asked the Orange County Commission to contribute $5 million to the project as well — a request unanimously approved by the Orange County board of commissioners last Tuesday.
A formal agreement on the funding commitment, yet to be drawn up, is expected to go before the Commission sometime in the near future.
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“I’m not looking for Orange County to be the obstacle to not finally, appropriately paying tribute to those who deserve to be recognized,” said Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who served as Orange County sheriff at the time of 2016 tragedy. “If we learn from the failures of the past, just maybe we can get this right.”
City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, an LGBTQ+ elected official herself whose district includes the Pulse property, acknowledged that OnePulse botched the process. A former friend of Barbara Poma’s (though they fell out post-Pulse), Sheehan argued that the city has remained transparent through the process.
“It’s unfortunate that the OnePulse Foundation did things in a way that I disagreed with. I walked away from them because of that,” she admitted, speaking in front of county commissioners last Tuesday. “We hoped they would be successful, but in the end, it’s not illegal to run a not-for-profit into the ground,” she said. Maybe it should be, she added, “and that’s the frustration, is that we’re having to deal with that baggage of the OnePulse Foundation.”
Critics of the city’s handling of the memorial process have pointed to what they believe to be conflicts of interest. Orlando chief protocol officer Earl Crittenden, an appointee of Dyer’s, formerly chaired the OnePulse board of directors. Crittenden, an attorney with the firm GrayRobinson, resigned from his position as OnePulse Foundation chair on Oct. 31, 2023, just two months before the organization officially dissolved.
More recently, Dyer orchestrated local businessman Craig Mateer’s purchase of some property behind Pulse that was previously owned (then sold) by OnePulse. The idea, according to Dyer’s chief of staff Heather Fagan, was to have Mateer later sell that property to the city for the construction of the memorial.
“There’s a process in government of how you purchase property, and there wasn’t time for the city to purchase that property,” Fagan explained Tuesday. “But we felt it was really important that we have that property to support parking, to have things like a restroom and so, we just knew the Pulse site itself was a challenge to accommodate all of that.”
Mayor Dyer, she said, decided to ask Mateer — a “community leader, who we know was in a position to be able to purchase that property” — to buy the property so that OnePulse wouldn’t sell it to anyone else.
Mateer agreed and bought the property for $1 million. Fagan confirmed the city plans to purchase the same property for the same price later this year.
Meanwhile, Osceola County is working on its own Pulse “tribute” — not a memorial, county spokespeople are quick to clarify — but that process has been delayed, too.
Although a groundbreaking for the “Wings of a Rainbow” tribute was supposed to take place June 12 of this year in Kissimmee, the county announced in a statement last month that they would be moving that to October.
“While an initial aspirational goal of this year’s anniversary was set to open the artistic tribute, we are heartened that the tribute has expanded in scope and will be a fuller experience once opened,” Tyler Winik, a county spokesperson, told Orlando Weekly in a statement. “As with any expansion of a project, additional considerations and time was needed,” he added, “ensuring the project appropriately celebrates the lives of victims and survivors.”
A visit inside
The former nightclub, which has for years had its entrances blocked off, will be demolished before construction of the memorial begins next year.
The club, located south of downtown off Orange Avenue, has been closed off this entire time. The city announced earlier this year, however, that staff would be scheduling private tours of the site for survivors and victims’ loved ones who wished to go inside before its demolition — to give them an opportunity for closure.
Tours are set to take place between June 11 and June 14 from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. According to the city, the tours (scheduled in shifts) will include some 250 individuals, including 120 people representing families of the 49 victims and 70 survivors.
Each survivor is able to bring one guest or support person, while family groups may comprise up to six people. All are required to sign waivers (reviewed by Orlando Weekly) that confirm they will not take photos or video footage inside the club.
Media partners, in the interest of privacy, were also asked by the city to refrain from filming visitors as they enter and exit Pulse.
Christine Leinonen told Orlando Weekly she’s preparing for the visit by “talking to Christopher,” her son, and by talking with her sister and her niece, who grew up with Christopher.
“Keeping busy with projects at home distracts me,” Leinonen wrote in a text.
She’s also preparing questions for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, which will be holding a closed meeting with victims’ families and survivors next week. The FBI will also have victims specialists touring with family and survivors inside the club, alongside bilingual behavioral health specialists and clergy, the city confirmed.
Leinonen, along with dozens of others involved in the grassroots group Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice, has for years advocated for a third-party inspection of the Pulse nightclub and a criminal investigation into the former owners. Critics have long alleged blocked exits and other code violations that could have prevented escape.
Some survivors have accused the city of being complicit in the OnePulse foundation’s failings (an allegation disputed by city officials), as well as delays in the public safety response to the shooting.
Although the shooting began around 2 a.m., Orlando police didn’t enter the building until about 5 a.m. According to 911 call records later released by the city, one caller at 4:55 a.m. asked a dispatcher, “Where are they?” referring to OPD. “I don’t understand. Everyone’s getting worse. Where are they?”
Another injured caller, around 2:11 a.m., told a dispatcher he was hiding under a pile of bodies in one of the bathrooms.
A 2018 study, published in the medical journal Prehospital Emergency Care, found that of the 49 people who died from the Pulse nightclub massacre, 16 of the fatalities (32 percent) “were felt to have been potentially preventable,” based on a review of autopsy reports.
Leinonen, who waited over 30 hours after the shooting to receive confirmation of her son’s death, believes Christopher was one of them. She said she’s not sure how she will feel upon entering the site of the massacre.
“There is going to be a lot of sadness over thinking about my son who was the child of 2 police officers who he loved and respected,” she said in a text. “Believing that the police outside would come for him. While he bled to death.”
Some first responders themselves also developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
Leinonen added, “If my son could endure catastrophic lethal damage … the least I could do is see where he took his last breath.”
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.
