Orlando, Central Florida rise up following horrific Pulse shooting

As the air shimmered over a sweltering Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando Monday, thousands pondered what humanity remained in the city in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in American history. They didn’t need long to find it.

At a vigil Monday night, standing aloft a stage surrounded by thousands of mourners, all of the speakers levied a similar message; of a city finding unity after its darkest moment. Massed on the grass mall fronting the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, well-wishers and mourners blotted out the green and lit up the sky with thousands of tiny candles.

“We are here to say that love will overcome in Orlando, Florida,” Interfaith Council of Central Florida Chairperson Rev. Bryan Fulwider told them. “Because that’s who this community is.”

When Pulse nightclub staff asked the throngs, still growing at 7:30 p.m., to find a stranger and hug them, suddenly the lawn was a sea of collective relief, if only for a moment.

“Hate will not define us,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said. “Hate will not defeat us.”

The initial images that spread worldwide showed horror, pain, sadness. Then Orlando turned to hope, flooding the globe with images and stories of lines of blood donors hundreds long, volunteers passing out thousands of bottles of water to mourners, of millions united in a defiant grief.

What had taken shooter Omar Mateen three hours to rain down upon an unsuspecting city had already taken more than a day to fully understand on its bare face.

Four days later, police continue to comb through a scene where more than 100 victims were shot, 49 of them fatally, at Pulse nightclub in the early morning hours of Sunday. Four days later, police still have little understanding of what precisely happened inside that club before SWAT teams launched a siege that would save countless lives.