Early Sunday morning, a shooter identified as Omar Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, opened fire at an Orlando nightclub, killing approximately 49 people and injuring at least 53 more.

Rob Kirkpatrick and Bernadette Lee welcomed terrorism analyst Kevin Mellott to "Acadiana's Morning News" to discuss whether Mateen was radicalized by ISIS or not.

"The one thing that's interesting to me about his actions is that he's following the playbook right in sequence of how they are supposed to do it where they do make contact, they do pledge allegiance, they do mention the organization," pointed out Mellott. "The organization is pretty good about having two to three different ways of routing their public releases out so it's not too easy to track it."

Mellott went on to talk about how ISIL released a video tape saying followers should start to attack the U.S. once Ramaddan started, which was last week. He also pointed out the shooter's possible association with a radical Imam, but he cautions proof of that will have to be uncovered during investigation.

How do you best prepare and survive these incidents? Mellott gave two main tips:

  • Know where emergency exits are
  • Get down and get out

Mellott explains how injuries from mass shootings tend to be to the shoulders and the legs, so it's important to get down and not give the shooter an easy target.

"To have all thhese people in the club and nobody take out the shooter is just a sad state of affairs...the factor that some people didn't jump up and go after him...you would think somebody would try to take out the shooter, and apparently that didn't happen.

Where will the investigation lead? What is the difference between an ISIS inspired or ISIS organized shooting? Mellott answers those questions and much more.

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