Wife of Orlando’s Pulse shooter gives interview for the first time in years: ‘“It’s time people know the truth’

The wife of the Pulse shooter is speaking out for the first time in years, giving a greater accounting of her side of the story than she ever has publicly.

In a new interview with Vice, Noor Salman painted a picture of a deeply abusive marriage that still offered no indication of what nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was planning. Salman enlisted family members to try and get his abuses in line, which included carving up his son’s toy with a knife in a fit of rage, to no avail.

Salman has left Orlando for California, changed her name and instructed her son to tell people he never knew his father. She says she frequently goes out in a kind of disguise, attempting to look as far as possible from the photos of her that were shared on the news.

Salman was tried and acquitted on allegations of aiding Mateen’s attack, at the time the deadliest mass shooting in American history. On the day after the shooting, investigators seemingly coerced a confession out of her during an 11-hour investigation. Though she told police that she wished she could go back in time and tell people what Mateen planned to do, further investigation found that Salman would have no way of knowing what the shooter was planning.

In her talks with Vice, she admitted she went along with the a railroading because she wanted to get out of the room. Now, she’s trying to raise her young son, who is fully aware of what his father did, and avoid being recognized,

“You did something so selfish, so evil, and you stuck me with your child,” she said of the situation. “Now I have to figure out how we’ll survive.”

The interview with Salman reveals a rather lonely existence, isolated from people who still refuse to be around her even after a jury cleared her name.

“I still have people that won’t associate with me even after my acquittal,” she said.

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This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2021.