'They said they didn't want me talking to him because he was a strange person,' said Van Horn. Van Horn also said he spent one night speaking with Mateen at the bar, but halfway through the conversation his friends asked him to join them outside. Mateen's first wife, Sitora Yusufiy, 27, also said that his own father once called him gay in front of her. 'He would walk up to them and put his arm around them or something and maybe try to get them to dance a little bit or something and go over and buy them a drink.' 'He's a homosexual and he was trying to pick up men,' said Jim Van Horn, who called Mateen a Pulse 'regular' and described his approach to chatting with people in the club. ISIS meanwhile, the terrorist group some believe Mateen killed in the name of, executes gay men on a daily basis in horrific fashions. The shooter's father, Seddique Mateen, made his beliefs on gay people very clear in a video he posted to Facebook on Monday saying 'homosexuals will be punished by God.' The attack, which many assumed was an act of Islamic extremism, now appears to possibly be tied to Mateen's own shame over his sexuality and investigators are now looking into this internal conflict as a possibly motive. Meanwhile, multiple people are now coming forward to say that they had spoken with Mateen on gay hookup apps including Grindr and Jack'd. Omar Mateen, the gunman who murdered 49 people in an Orlando gay club early Sunday morning, was a gay man himself according to multiple people who knew and had met the man.Ī gay man who attended the police academy in 2006 with Mateen said that the pair went out to gay bars and that at one point Mateen told the man he wanted to pursue a relationship. See more news on the Orlando gunman as his ex-wife says he was gayīy Chris Spargo For and James Wilkinson For and Matt Hunter For Mailonline.His own father said in a Facebook video posted on Monday that 'homosexuals will be punished by God'.These new developments have investigators investigating whether Mateen's shame over his sexuality may have motivated the attack.