A group of family members and survivors of the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando delivered a report to State Attorney Monique Worrell’s office Thursday — the ninth anniversary of the tragedy — in a call for her office to launch criminal investigations into Pulse’s former owners and the city of Orlando.
The grassroots Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice, a group that includes more than 100 survivors and family members of shooting victims, believes club owners Barbara and Rosario Poma should be investigated over alleged insurance fraud and code violations at Pulse that they believe made the club unsafe and more difficult to escape when the gunman attacked.
Described as the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time, the Orlando community experienced a devastating tragedy after a gunman opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub, just after 2 a.m. on June 12, 2016. Forty-nine people were killed (mostly young Latinos and people of color) and 53 wounded.
The group also alleges the city government has engaged in what they describe as “deliberate conspiring, colluding, and covering up all of the illegal and unpermitted problems within the club to keep the facts from the victims’ families and survivors, their own City Council members, members of the County, and the public.” Public inspection records obtained by the group show the city was aware of and identified code issues (including “unpermitted interior and exterior work”) as far back as 2010.
The city has repeatedly told media that the club was in compliance with building code requirements at the time of the shooting. Former city spokesperson Cassandra Bell (who left her position with the city last April) told Orlando Weekly back in 2023 that “the Pulse facility was safe” and “met occupancy, fire and related requirements.”
According to the report summary delivered to Worrell’s office, shared with Orlando Weekly, the group first approached Worrell’s office in 2023. The group was told, however, that they first had to go through “proper channels” before the office could begin an investigation into allegations of negligence. The group subsequently approached the Orlando Police Department, which began its own investigation into the allegations and then closed the case in 2024.
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Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice, formerly known as the Community Coalition Against a Pulse Museum, has been gathering scores of public records — including reports on code violations at Pulse — since at least 2019. That’s when the OnePulse Foundation, a nonprofit formed by Barbara Poma less than one month after the mass shooting, revealed plans for a garish Pulse memorial and museum concept that carried an ambitious pricetag of $45 million.
The extravagance of the concept, and the floated idea of charging a fee for entry into the museum, angered a number of survivors as well as family members of victims. “They’re not honoring my son,” Christine Leinonen, who lost her 32-year-old son Christopher “Drew” Leinonen from the shooting, told Orlando Weekly in 2019. “They’re making it into a spectacle, a circus. My son is not a tourist attraction. He lived his life with honor, with dignity, with character.”
Leinonen’s son, Christopher, her only child, was a University of Central Florida graduate and licensed clinical social worker who, in his personal time, enjoyed the game Dance Dance Revolution and watching classic films at the nonprofit Enzian Theater, a local institution. His 22-year-old boyfriend and “soul mate” Juan Guerrero also died at Pulse nightclub on the night of the massacre.
Leinonen, a resident of Polk County, ventured inside the former gay nightclub last week, along with about 90 survivors and family members of victims for the first time since the 2016 tragedy. The city of Orlando organized four days of tours inside the club off South Orange Avenue in an effort to provide affected individuals an opportunity for closure.
The city bought the Pulse property from the former club owners for $2 million in 2023, after the OnePulse Foundation announced they would no longer be able to build their pricey memorial. The organization, formed by Barbara Poma shortly after the shootings, dissolved itself on Dec. 31, 2023, after raising millions of dollars from public and private donors.
The city subsequently established an advisory committee, made up in part of survivors and family members, and unveiled their preferred design concept this past February, featuring a visitors pavilion, a rainbow prism plaza, and a survivors wall blazoned with the phrase, “For All Who Just Wanted to Dance.”
The former club, which has had its entrances blocked off for years, will be demolished as part of the construction of a permanent memorial on the site. Construction is expected to begin around this time next year with an estimated completion in 2027.
Still, not everyone is enthusiastic about the city’s takeover of the project. There’s skepticism from survivors and family members who have been critical of city officials’ personal and working relationships with the Pomas.
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In their more than 300-page report, the Pulse Families and Survivors for Justice group include public records that include: email communications from city employees, police body-cam footage, redacted photos of the nightclub after the shooting (including a soda cooler blocking one of the exits), and input from whistleblowers who served as former city employees and OnePulse Foundation board members.
City officials, including Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and city commissioner Patty Sheehan, have denied allegations of cover-up and complicity with OnePulse’s failings.
“It’s unfortunate that the OnePulse Foundation did things in a way that I disagreed with. I walked away from them because of that,” Sheehan shared, speaking in front of Orange County commissioners last week.
“We hoped they would be successful, but in the end, it’s not illegal to run a not-for-profit into the ground,” she noted. 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.”
Mayor Dyer, who says he won’t be running for re-election in 2027, also shared ahead of OnePulse’s dissolution that he disagreed with “a lot of the things” the nonprofit did “and how they went about doing it.”
During a press conference outside of Pulse last week, Dyer referred to an unnamed “instigator” who he claims has been stirring up trouble unnecessarily.
“There has been somebody that has been very troublesome to staff, and really has been a second terrorist,” Dyer remarked off the cuff, without naming the “terrorist” in question.
City spokesperson Ashley Papagani, when later questioned by Orlando Weekly about Dyer’s comments, declined to clarify to whom Dyer was referring. “The City of Orlando is deeply committed to supporting the victims’ families and survivors, and to honoring the 49 angels who were tragically taken,” she shared in a statement. “That will always remain the City’s mission,” she continued. “We will not be deterred by those who seek to hinder this important effort.”
Papagni did not respond to a follow-up question about who they believe is seeking to “hinder” the city’s efforts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigations sent victims specialist staff to accompany families and survivors on tours inside Pulse nightclub this week, to help them identify where exactly their loved ones died, upon request. The FBI, which investigated the motives of the shooting in the early days after it happened, also held two closed meetings with survivors and families last week to provide a final briefing on the matter.
City officials, including Dyer were not invited to the FBI meeting, nor were they informed of what would be discussed.
According to WESH News, some families were upset afterward. Some, including Leinonen, said they felt unheard by the FBI after trying to ask federal agents questions about allegations laid out in the report delivered to Worrell’s office Thursday.
“They wanted to kick me out of the family meeting,” Leinonen told Orlando Weekly in a text. “I stopped. But it got so ridiculous that I decided to leave the meeting early on my own.”
Although Leinonen wasn’t there Thursday to deliver the report to Worrell’s office (the group included victims advocate Dr. Zachary Blair, survivor Jorshua Hernandez, and Aracelis Jimenez, one of the victims’ mothers) Leinonen told Orlando Weekly she supports an investigation into the city.
The report delivered to the state attorney lays out allegations of the city willfully concealing information about code violations at the club and an alleged failure by the Orlando Police Department to follow active shooter protocol.
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.