Orlando police have closed their investigation into the former owners of Pulse nightclub without filing any charges, despite calls from families and survivors of the shooting that killed 49 LGBTQ+ clubgoers for police to investigate them for criminal charges.
Orlando police said in an emailed statement this week that no charges will be filed against the former owners, Barbara and Rosario Poma, because there was no probable cause for manslaughter.
About 20 people, including survivors and family members of the victims of the 2016 shooting, have spoken to investigators, saying that while club patrons were held hostage for three hours, building plans were not made available to emergency personnel and that unauthorized renovations and alterations were being made to the building.
They also alleged the club likely exceeded its capacity, had been operating for years in violation of its conditional use permit and had flaws in security and risk management.
Despite efforts to reach the Poma family, investigators were unable to interview them, and Poma family spokeswoman Sarah Brady said Wednesday no statement would be made.
Investigators concluded that a lack of building plans would not have hindered rescue efforts, that it was impossible to determine how many people were in the club that night, that the city of Orlando took no action against Pulse when the nightclub remodeled its interior, and that there were too many unknowns about how shooter Omar Mateen got in.
None of the Poma's actions “recklessly demonstrated disregard for human life” and they “could not have reasonably foreseen or anticipated that a terrorist incident would occur at Pulse,” investigators wrote in the report.
Mateen opened fire during a Latino Night celebration on June 12, 2016, killing 49 people and wounding 53. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Mateen, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, was killed after a three-hour standoff with police.
The following year, 58 people were killed and more than 850 were injured at a country music festival in Las Vegas, surpassing the death toll of the Pulse shooting. The city of Orlando purchased the Pulse property last year for $2 million.
