The ISIS-inspired gunman who massacred 49 people in a gay Florida nightclub placed a chilling call amid the mayhem to an overnight TV producer and stunningly proclaimed: "I'm the shooter."
"I will never forget the words he said to me," Bright House-owned News 13 producer Matthew Gentili says in an interview posted Wednesday about Omar Mateen's early Sunday call from the Orlando, Fla. scene of the deadliest mass shooting in
American history.
About 45 minutes after the shooting began at the Pulse nightclub, Mateen's call came into the station's newsroom just 5 minutes away where Gentili said he was working an overnight shift.
"It was at 2:45 a.m. when I had just received the phone call of someone claiming to be the Orlando shooter," he said. "I answered the phone as I always do: 'News 13, this is Matt.' And on the other end, I heard, 'Do you know about the shooting?' "
"Yes, I'm getting calls," Gentili said he responded. "I am hearing reports of a shooting."
But the caller abruptly cut him off, Gentili said.
"I'm the shooter. It's me. I am the shooter," the caller said.
Gentili said he didn't know what to say when the caller suddenly "started speaking Arabic."
"At the time, I didn't know what he was saying," Gentili says in the interview. "He was speaking so fast. But it was ... he was speaking fluently. Whatever language he was speaking, he knew it. And he was speaking it very quickly. And that is when I said to him, 'Sir. Please. Speak in English, please.'"
Gentili said the caller stopped, and proclaimed in English: "I did it for ISIS. I did it for the Islamic State."
The producer said he then asked where the caller was – and was told it was "none of my [expletive] business."
"It was silent for a while," Gentili added. "I asked him: 'Is there anything else you want to say?' He said 'no' and hung up the phone."
After his 12-hour shift, Gentili was interviewed at home by the FBI, the local station reports.
According to the news station, agents wouldn't confirm if Gentili spoke to Mateen, but that it was able to match the number from the caller to the gunman.
"I'm definitely changed," Gentili says in the interview. "When you get a phone call like that, I'm never going to be able to answer the phone again without thinking this is the most serious call I'll ever get in my life."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.