Employer of Pulse Nightclub Shooter Ignored Warnings About Two Other Killers

    An undated selfie of Omar Mateen. (MySpace via AP)

G4S, the security company that employed Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people early Sunday in Orlando, Fla., failed to heed warnings about at least two other employees who went on to commit murder.

Shoshana Walter reports at The Center for Investigative Reporting:

In 2015, a coroner’s investigation in the United Kingdom found G4S ignored red flags before Danny Fitzsimons shot and killed two co-workers in Baghdad in 2009. The company had received anonymous emails from a fellow guard with warnings about Fitzsimmons.

“I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk,” one of the emails said.

“I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing,” another reads.

Fitzsimons, who already was facing assault and a firearms-related charges at the time of his hiring, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had been dismissed from a prior Iraq contractor after he punched a client, according to news reports.

He wrote in his private papers: “I will continue to satisfy my blood lust and my need to take life.”

During the investigation, a former senior director at G4S described a subsequent company audit that found “widespread failure in screening and vetting processes.” Of the 500 employees screened, he said a total of 304 had failed to meet the required standards, according to news reports about the hearing.

In Canada in 2013, former G4S armored car guard Travis Baumgartner was convicted of murder after shooting four of his co-workers in a robbery at the University of Alberta in 2012.

Over the three months before the shootings, Baumgartner had posted several statements on Facebook that authorities later cited in court documents. Among them: “I wonder if I’d make the six o’clock news if I just started poping (sic) people off.” Later, he changed his profile photograph to a picture of himself wearing a vest, balaclava mask and sunglasses.

In Mateen’s case, none of the guard’s previous background checks had prevented him from purchasing guns or obtaining licenses to work as an armed guard.

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—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.