Omar Mateen's former co-worker: Company told me 'We have to be careful because he's a Muslim'

A former co-worker of Omar Mateen repeatedly warned the security company where he worked that Mateen was unhinged. Daniel Gilroy says the company did nothing and even told him, “We have to be careful because he’s a Muslim.”

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Gilroy tells Fox News’ Griff Jenkins he warned three supervisors and a human resources person at the security company where he worked about his co-worker’s bigoted, aggressive behavior. “I told my supervisor,” Gilroy says. Asked how many times, Gilroy replies, “I believe it was on two separate occasions but after if fell on deaf ears and it seemed like they didn’t want to handle it or deal with it.” “I saw the writing on the wall,” Gilroy adds. After walking Jenkins through his efforts to alert people up the chain about Mateen he concludes, “Nobody cared.”

One reason the company gave him for not wanting to “deal with it” was concern about singling out Mateen because of his faith. Gilroy tells Fox News, “So they knew about him when they were talking to me and they still said, you know, ‘well, you have no evidence’ and ‘it’s hard to prove’ and ‘we have to be careful because he’s a Muslim.'”

In his interview with Megyn Kelly Monday night, Daniel Gilroy described Omar Mateen as “a devout Muslim” who brought a prayer rug with him to work every day. Gilroy said Mateen would pray in front of him for perhaps 10 minutes during a daily shift change and sometimes another time during the day. So there is little doubt Mateen’s employer was aware of his faith.

Speaking of Mateen’s demeanor, Gilroy says, “He almost yelled while having a normal conversation.” He adds, “Classes of people would set him off and it was a respect thing, but they didn’t disrespect him, it was a perceived disrespect. He would say things like ‘they think they’re better than me and they’re not’ and ‘they’re not even human,’ things like that.”

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Gilroy believes Mateen’s attack could have been prevented if the company had acted. “This wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a slip through the cracks. It wasn’t a matter of incompetence or intelligence,” Gilroy says. “They knew the right thing. It was a matter of dollars and cents,” he adds. Four months after first talking to his supervisor about Mateen, Gilroy quit in order to get away from him.

At the end of this interview, Gilroy suggests that he has some information which might suggest Mateen was not working alone. “It’s possible that other people were involved,” Gilroy says. It sounds as if his microphone is either not working or has been removed during this portion of the interview. “Can you tell me more?” Griff Jenkins asks. Gilroy replies, “Law enforcement needs time to investigate that.” Gilroy says local law enforcement has already taken his report on the matter but he has not yet been interviewed by the FBI.

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