Laly Santiago-Leon sat on the floor inside the Pulse nightclub, the exact spot where her close cousin died with his partner in one of the nation’s worst mass shootings nine years ago.
“It helped with closure,” she said with tears on the ninth anniversary of the massacre. “But there will never be closure, but an understanding.”
Santiago-Leon was among more than 90 survivors and family members who visited the Pulse nightclub this week before it is torn down and replaced with a permanent memorial.
Until this week, few people, other than the investigators, had gotten a chance to go inside the shuttered LGBTQ-friendly nightclub where a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others on June 12, 2016.
Orlando city officials invited survivors and the families of victims to see the building if they wanted, saying some thought it would help them in their “journey of grief.”
Some visited Pulse on the ninth anniversary of the massacre Thursday but chose not to go inside. Others visited the building looking for answers, as questions still persist — about law enforcement’s handling of the case, the club’s compliance with building codes and a private foundation’s failed fundraising efforts to build a permanent memorial.
How onePulse broke Orlando’s heart
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, groups arrived via a shuttle bus. Black privacy screens and umbrellas shielded them from onlookers. They got to spend about 30 minutes inside the club and then were driven back to a hotel. The visits wrap up Saturday.
Santiago-Leon called it a “sacred space” that she wanted to touch before the building is demolished. Her cousin whom she considered as a brother — Daniel Wilson-Leon — died there with his partner, Jean Mendez Perez.
She was told the couple were found on the dance floor “in each other’s arms.”
“It was hard,” she said about visiting the site. “All the memories just came through. …But it was something that I wanted to do. … It was a way to say goodbye to that space.”
Christine Leinonen walked around the dance floor where her son Christopher “Drew” Leinonen and 19 others died in a hail of gunfire.
“I needed to see where my son took his last breath,” she said. “It’s as simple as that, and as painful as it is, it’s nowhere near as painful as what my son experienced that night.”
Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando: Remembering the victims of June 12, 2016
The gunman, Omar Mateen, opened fire during the club’s Latin Night. Police shot and killed Mateen, who pledged allegiance to an Islamic State militant group, after a three-hour standoff. FBI investigators deemed the massacre a terrorist attack, the deadliest in the United States since 9/11.
At the time, the rampage was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The death toll was surpassed the following year when a gunman killed 60 people and injured 850 more in Las Vegas.
The shuttered Pulse building has been cleaned, and the furniture removed. A makeshift memorial surrounds the former club with pictures of the victims and mourners, flowers and Puerto Rican and American flags. Handwritten messages are scrawled on the Pulse sign. One reads, “Love wins.” Another says, “Do Not Forget.”
For some, it was too painful to go inside the building. Jorshua Hernandez, 31, was shot twice and still has a bullet lodged inside of him. As the horror unfolded, he waited for three hours on a bathroom floor bleeding from the gunshot wounds, along with other hostages, until police arrived.
He said he didn’t want to relive that day.
“It’s for my mental health,” he said after lifting his T-shirt to show the long scar across his stomach and chest. “I don’t want to see the restroom. I don’t want to see the bullet holes. I don’t want to walk in and see where I was laying… I want to end this chapter of my life.”
Hernandez said he wants new investigations, examining the city’s code enforcement at Pulse and whether limited pathways to escape contributed to the death toll. City officials and the club owner said the building complied with code requirements and had sufficient exits. But Hernandez said windows and doors were blocked, preventing people from fleeing.
The FBI met with families ahead of the visits, but Leinonen left dissatisfied with the agency, saying it didn’t adequately answer questions. She said she’s upset the FBI is closing the investigation and questioned whether the agency could have kept a closer eye on Mateen before the shooting.
“The 49 people are directly a result of the FBI failure,” she said.
The FBI twice investigated the gunman before the attack but closed the case finding no criminal charges to pursue. Agents first scrutinized Mateen in 2013 after he boasted of connections to terrorists. He was questioned again in 2014 as part of a separate probe into a suicide bomber who attended his mosque and was a casual acquaintance.
Mateen was put on a terrorist watchlist during the investigation, but he was removed when no criminal charges were filed as outlined by the agency’s rules.
In 2018, it was revealed that Mateen’s father was a secret FBI informant for over a decade.
U.S. Rep. Darren Soto said he’d like to see most of the FBI’s files made public when the investigation is closed, with the exception of victim images and top-secret information related to national security.
“This tragedy remains in our hearts and our minds,” said Soto, a Democrat who represents Osceola County. “We can continue to learn from it.”
An FBI spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the status of the investigation and whether the agency’s files will eventually be made public.
Efforts to build a permanent memorial have been plagued with infighting. The onePulse Foundation, the nonprofit initially leading those efforts, dissolved in late 2023 without achieving its goal of building a remembrance and museum. The group planned a $45 million project that swelled to a price tag of $100 million. One of the group’s founders was Barbara Poma, an owner of the Pulse nightclub.
The foundation’s failure to build a memorial outraged some victim families who questioned its spending decisions and operations.
After onePulse collapsed, the city of Orlando purchased the property for $2 million and took over efforts to build a memorial. The city is planning a less ambitious $12 million memorial on the site. The nightclub building is expected to be razed later this year, and construction will start in the summer of 2026. The city hopes to complete the project by 2027.
Early plans show a reflection pool where the club’s dance floor stood. It also will include a pavilion, tribute wall and a garden.
As families and survivors saw the inside of the club this week, a steady stream of people left flowers outside or just stood silently and reflected near the makeshift memorials. Some wiped tears from their eyes. Some wore Orlando United T-shirts.
Jakob Strawn, 25, of Orlando, said he visits the Pulse club each year out of respect for the victims, still with a pain in his heart. The shooting happened when he was a high school student in Tampa, hitting him and others in his school’s LGBTQ community hard.
“People do still remember,” he said, standing near a wall of flowers and memorials. “I’m 25. When I look around here, I’m now older than some of these people were when they died. Nine years is not a very long time, and as long as I live in Orlando, I’ll keep coming out here every year.”