Flags at half-staff to respect Orlando mass shooting victims

Pence released a statement Sunday and asked for flags to be flown at half-staff at state facilities to honor the 50 people killed and at least 53 people wounded in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States.

The flags will be flown at half-staff beginning immediately until sunset, June 16, 2016.

Gov. Mike Pence called the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida at a gay nightclub a “senseless act of terror”.

Katie Stuckenschneider, communications director for Promo, the state’s largest LGBT-rights organzation, said the fact that Cole County is not adhering to the president’s proclamation “is beyond hurtful to the victims and their families and the entire LGBT community”.

Sunday’s flag directive overlaps a previous directive from the Governor, which directed that flags be lowered to half-staff for the passing of Hoosier West Point Cadet Mitchell Alexander Winey.

The I-35W bridge in Minneapolis is lit in rainbow colors to commemorate the victims of the shooting in Orlando. Shooter Omar Mateen, who claimed loyalty to ISIS, was shot and killed.

President Obama received an update Monday morning on the massacre, which is being classified as a domestic terror incident. “There are people outside our country and some within it, who hate the freedoms that we enjoy and would seek to threaten them and undermine them with violence”. “Today’s tragedy showed none of that”.