Gun Shop Owner Denied Orlando Shooter Body Armor & Bulk Ammo Order

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JENSEN BEACH (CBSMiami) – A gun shop owner in Jensen Beach said the Orlando shooter walked into his store and requested high-grade body armor and a bulk order of ammo.

"Told him we didn't have it… that was deceptive," Lotus Gunworks owner Robert Abell told reporters. "We had the ammo and decided not to sell it."

The man behind the counter suspected something was suspicious about the incident because Omar Mateen first asked for the level 3 body armor.

When the man behind the counter said he didn't have one, Mateen reportedly stepped away from the counter to make a phone call – speaking in what may have been Arabic. When he returned to the counter, he asked for 1,000 rounds of ammunition – a request that was also denied.

"It doesn't happen… unless you are law enforcement," Abell said of Mateen's request for the high-grade body armor. "It's not an odd request for bulk ammo. Where his mistake was for the asking for the body armor and then when he went to the phone. Fortunately, the gentleman (the clerk) was prior military… something in his gut told him it was wrong. His intuition was correct, 100 percent dead on."

They called the FBI and reported the incident.

"They had a conversation at the front counter and said this was very odd, let's report it," Abell said.

As we have heard with this shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the Pulse nightclub, everyone described Mateen as odd.

"When you reported this incident, did anyone on the other end who you reported it to ask for your security tape?" CBS4's Silva Harapetian asked Abell.

"We went back and looked at it, it wasn't clear," he said.

As investigators combed through the store's records at the Lotus Gunworks, a few miles away a Middle Eastern store and restaurant owner who knew the Mateen family spoke with Harapetian.

"You don't get involved in asking questions, but he seemed to be always quite... very soft-spoken, he had been here a few times," said Muhammad Hussein, who owns the Tabuleh Cafe.

Authorities believe Mateen was radicalized in recent years and they point to the Facebook message the killer posted before the massacre as evidence.

It read: "You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes. Now taste the Islamic state vengeance."

The message was a precursor for the attack inside the nightclub.

Mateen, who chatted on gay hook-up apps and visited Pulse several times, is said to have been acting erratically.

Hussein found it hard to believe that Mateen's actions were motivated by an international terror group and instead suggested that the gunman was confused about his sexuality.

"Radicalized... I don't think it has nothing to do with religion," said Hussein. "He's just not a religious person. He probably just said that. In religion, being gay is unacceptable."

When asked to clarify, Hussein added, "That he may be (gay)."