The mother of the Orlando shooter once struck a deaf man in a wheelchair with her car, Heat Street has learned. In March 2010, Shahla Mateen backed out of her driveway in a Lexus SUV, hitting one of her neighbors. The man struck describes the Mateen family’s oddly callous response to the accident, noting that “I still consider [them] friends.”
“As she reversed… her vehicle struck me severely,” wrote Simone Bacino, the victim, in a narrative he submitted to the Port St. Lucie Police Department. “I was in my wheel chair on the way to exercise, and the next thing I knew, I awoke from a momentary ‘black-out.’ My wheel chair had been severely damaged, and I was thrust six feet from the spot of the impact.”
Bacino says Shahla Mateen was running late to her job and “no one went to my home, which is literally 4 houses down, to inform my hearing son that I had been struck.” Another neighbor eventually found Bacino’s son and informed him of the accident, he wrote.
When his son arrived, “[The Mateen family] simply replied that [I] was OK and that all they needed was a screw driver to fix my very important wheelchair that is very costly. In fact, my son, some 10-15 minutes after the incident took place, had to call 911. It got to the point in which the Mateen family tried placing me in a spare wheel chair, which, when dealing with persons of spinal chord issues is an absolute do not do,” Bacino wrote.
The police cited Shahla Mateen for improper backing, while Bacino was brought to St. Lucie Medical Center for minor injuries, a police officer wrote.
Beyond the wheelchair accident, the Mateen family pops up in a few other police records.
The Sun Sentinel reported earlier this week that Shahla Mateen had been arrested in Martin County in 2002, after allegedly pulling her husband’s hair and pinching him during a fight. She reportedly told authorities her husband, Seddique Mateen (the Orlando killer’s father) threatened to kill her, the Sun Sentinel says. No charges were filed.
In 1996, a police officer spoke with Seddique Mateen after he received an abuse/neglect report about the Mateen’s neighbors, who were parents of a one-month-old baby, according to Port St. Lucie police records.
The police asked Seddique Mateen, as well as other witnesses, to call 911 if he saw the parents or the infant return, the report says; he later told police he did, though their review of the 911 logs was inconclusive. The baby died less than a week later, in a house littered with marijuana smoking devices and condoms, police records say. The report adds that there was no evidence of foul play, negligence, or abuse in the infant’s death.
The TC Palm also reported on other odd brushes between the Mateen family and law enforcement, noting that “none appear to foreshadow the killing rampage.”
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute.
