Alive but still reeling one year after Florida nightclub shooting

Kaliesha Andino, a wounded survivor of the mass shooting at Florida's Pulse nightclub is seen hugging her mother in Orlando, Florida, U.S., on April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Letitia Stein

By Letitia Stein

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Kaliesha Andino has spent the last year running from gunshots. At night, she flashes back to her hiding spot behind a bar in a Florida nightclub, where a bullet ripped through her arm during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The date her life shattered, June 12, 2016, is tattooed in Roman numerals on her other arm, along with images of clouds and an eye to memorialize a friend who was among the 49 people killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Like others who got out alive, Andino, 20, has spent the year since the attack navigating the line between victim and survivor. Her physical wounds have healed. But she searches for exits in crowded rooms and has not been working.

“I will never have closure,” she said, adding: “I’ve got to live right now. I have to cope with the situation.”

The death toll in the attack marked the worst in a spate of U.S. shooting rampages in recent years – from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut to an office party in San Bernardino, California – that stoked debate about gun control and left communities grappling with deep emotional and physical wounds.

Counseling and medical needs have consumed many survivors working to establish a new normal after gunman Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse during Latin music night. Some saw their trauma magnified when the tragedy at the gay club outed them as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).

One survivor recently had a lodged bullet removed. Others have struggled at times to leave home after the rampage, which also left more than 50 people injured.

Mateen held hostages inside for three hours before he died in an exchange of gunfire with police.

“They are still so raw,” said attorney Antonio Romanucci, who is suing Mateen’s ex-employer and widow on behalf of dozens of victims, including Andino and relatives of some of the deceased. “They are still living it.”

Approximately 300 people who were at the club or directly tied to the victims still receive support services from the Orlando United Assistance Center. That is down from the more than 800 helped in the immediate aftermath, said Michael Aponte, director for the resource hub, which involves government and community groups.

NOT READY TO MOVE ON

Rainbow-colored banners adorn the chain-link fence around Pulse. People from around the world have left mementos and scrawled notes, now fading in the sun. “Never stop dancing,” reads an inscription on a parking lot barrier.

To honor the one-year mark on Monday, June 12, Pulse owner Barbara Poma plans to open the club gate so survivors and victims’ relatives can gather inside at 2:02 a.m., when the first shots were fired.

“Everybody is still in very different places,” Poma said. “I would not say there is anybody that is ready to move on.”

At unexpected moments, 31-year-old Juan Jose Cufiño’s thoughts return to the night that started as a celebration with friends two days before he was to return to his native Colombia.

He hears bullets pounding the floor and people screaming, he said in Spanish through a translator. He smells blood.

The first shot to hit him struck his right arm. Two more tore into his legs. Falling to his knees, Cufiño waited for a fatal blow. A fourth shot pierced his back.

When police arrived waving flashlights, the former physical education teacher mustered all his strength to signal that he was alive. He remembers an officer dragging him out by an arm.

Three months later, Cufiño awoke from a medically induced coma and learned he would never walk again.

After a year of surgeries and rehabilitation, Cufiño still needs help dressing. But he can lift himself out of his wheelchair and hopes one day to prove medical experts wrong.

“In this moment, I don’t know what it is to be a survivor,” he said in Spanish. “I think I am still a victim.”

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; editing by Colleen Jenkins and Dan Grebler)

Police videos show chaotic scenes of Florida nightclub massacre

FILE PHOTO - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials walk through the parking lot of the Pulse gay night club, the site of a mass shooting days earlier, in Orlando, Florida, U.S. on June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Adrees Latif/File Photo

(Reuters) – Police body camera videos of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history were released by a Florida newspaper on Wednesday, showing harrowing scenes of officers rushing into the Orlando nightclub where 49 people were killed in June 2016.

Among the 15 hours of videos obtained through a public records request by the Orlando Sentinel is a scene of officers firing toward gunman Omar Mateen and one officer yelling: “Come out with your hands up or you will die.”

Portions of the videos were posted on the newspaper’s website. Footage of those who died was not shown.

As police neared the cornered gunman, one officer said a prayer to himself: “Lord Jesus, watch over me,” the paper reported.

Mateen, a 29-year-old who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, opened fire inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, on June 12, 2016, before he was killed by police after a three-hour standoff. In addition to those killed, at least 58 people were injured.

The videos released to the newspaper show officers arriving on the scene, taking weapons out of their vehicles and entering the club through a shattered window.

People in the club can be seen fleeing, with officers telling them to keep their hands up and directing them to safety.

A body camera on Orlando policeman Graham Cage shows an officer leading a victim out of a club bathroom and down a hallway, the paper said.

“Hands up, both hands, put your hands up,” the officer says off-camera. “Follow the sound of my voice. Come this way.”

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Leslie Adler)

U.S. judge orders Florida nightclub shooter’s widow to remain in jail

File Photo: Investigators work the scene following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – The widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida must remain in jail after prosecutors argued that she was a threat to the community and a flight risk, a U.S. judge on Thursday ordered.

The federal judge in Florida stayed another judge’s order issued on Wednesday that would have released Noor Salman, 30, from a California jail. He put the release order on hold pending further arguments in the case.

Salman was arrested in California in January on federal charges she knew before the June 2016 shootings in Orlando that her husband, Omar Mateen, was planning the attack and concocted a cover story for him.

U.S. District Judge Paul Byron in Orlando ordered Salman detained and set a Wednesday deadline for her lawyers to respond to prosecutors’ arguments that she should be jailed pending her trial in Florida.

Salman is charged with obstructing justice and aiding Mateen in his attempt to provide material support to the Islamic State militant group.

Prosecutors argued in a motion that the seriousness of the charge related to the Islamic State meant Salman should be kept in jail.

“No pretrial release condition or combination of conditions may be imposed to reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance as required or the safety of the community,” they said.

They also said that Salman was a flight risk since she was unemployed and had moved to California, where she has relatives, and had almost no ties to Florida. Her family also owns property in the Middle East, they said.

Charles Swift, Salman’s lawyer, said Byron’s order keeping Salman jailed pending the filing of more motions was routine. “It’s standard,” he said in a telephone interview.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu on Wednesday had cleared the way for Salman’s release and appeared throw doubt on the government’s case against her.

Ryu had ordered her to live with her uncle in Rodeo, California, undergo GPS monitoring and leave home only for court and medical appointments. She set a $500,000 bond.

Mateen was killed in a shootout with police after a standoff at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Before the shooting he called 911 and swore allegiance to the Islamic State.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Judge approves release of Florida nightclub shooter’s widow

FILE PHOTO -- Investigators work the scene following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

By Lisa Fernandez

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) – A judge cleared the way on Wednesday for the widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, to be released from jail and also appeared to throw doubt on the strength of the government’s case against her.

Noor Salman, 30, was arrested in California in January on federal charges she knew before the June 2016 shootings that her husband, Omar Mateen, was planning the attack and concocted a cover story for him.

Prosecutors want Salman to remain jailed before her trial in Florida. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu said in an Oakland courtroom that the government had not shown Salman was a danger to the community or a serious flight risk.

“I find the weight of the government evidence as debatable,” Ryu added.

Commenting on the prosecutor’s charges against Salman, the judge said: “All the government assertions are hotly debated.”

Salman is charged with obstructing justice and aiding Mateen in his attempt to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

Mateen was killed in a shootout with police after he took hostages during a three-hour standoff at the Pulse nightclub and carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

One of Salman’s lawyers, Linda Moreno, said the approved release “doesn’t usually happen in a so-called terrorism case.”

Ryu gave prosecutors in Florida 48 hours to challenge her ruling, meaning Salman could not walk free from jail until Friday at the earliest.

William Daniels, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Florida, said by telephone that prosecutors would file a motion by Friday with a judge in Orlando challenging Salman’s release.

Ryu likened Salman’s release to house arrest, ordering her to live with her uncle in Rodeo, California, and saying she could leave home only for court and medical appointments. Her conditional release will be secured with a $500,000 bond.

Salman’s 4-year-old son with Mateen, who is living with her mother, will be allowed to visit.

Salman, dressed in a red jail uniform, bit her nails during the hearing and looked at the dozen relatives who came in support.

Outside the courtroom, her uncle, Abdallah “Al” Salman, with whom she will live, again declared his niece innocent.

“She does not read between the lines,” he said, reiterating that she has learning disabilities and did not have the capacity to aid in the massacre.

(Reporting by Lisa Fernandez; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Peter Cooney and Grant McCool)

Florida nightclub gunman’s wife accused of misleading police

An Orlando resident wears an "Orlando Strong" T-shirt during a vigil at Lake Eola Park for victims of an early morning shooting attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, U.S June 12, 2016.

By Letitia Stein

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) – The wife of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last year was due in court on Tuesday, accused of misleading authorities investigating the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

A federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday showed Noor Salman, 30, who was arrested on Monday in California, is charged with obstructing justice and aiding and abetting husband Omar Mateen’s attempt to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

Salman, who media reports said had been living in the San Francisco area, was to appear in federal court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday.

Mateen was killed in a shootout with police after he took hostages during a three-hour standoff in the Pulse nightclub. He also wounded dozens more in the June 12 attack, which intensified fears about attacks against Americans inspired by Islamic State.

The indictment, initially sealed, was returned last week by a federal grand jury in the U.S. Middle District of Florida, which includes Orlando. It accuses Salman of criminal activity beginning as early as April, several months before the massacre. Court documents said she abetted Mateen in providing support to a designated terrorist organization and engaged in “misleading conduct” toward local and federal authorities regarding the Pulse attack.

Salman told the New York Times in November she did not know Mateen was planning the massacre.

Mateen, 29, pledged allegiance to the leader of Islamic State during the rampage in which he used an assault rifle and pistol that had been legally purchased although he had twice been investigated by the FBI for possible connections with militant Islamist groups.

U.S. authorities say Mateen, who lived in Fort Pierce, Florida, with Salman and their young child, was self-radicalized and acted alone without assistance or orders from abroad.

Salman, a U.S. citizen and the daughter of parents who immigrated from the West Bank in 1985, was repeatedly questioned by law enforcement interrogators after the attack.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Trott)

Wife of Orlando nightclub gunman arrested on federal charges

Police in front of apartment building

By Daniel Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The FBI on Monday arrested the wife of the gunman who killed 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub last year, a massacre that intensified fears about attacks against Americans inspired by Islamic State, officials said.

Noor Salman, 30, is being charged with obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting by providing material support to a terrorist organization, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in a statement.Salman’s arrest came seven months after her husband, Omar Mateen, went on a hours-long siege at the Florida club that ended when police killed him. She was due to appear in federal court in Oakland, California on Tuesday morning.

“Certainly I can confirm that an arrest did occur in this case,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told MSNBC.

“We said from the beginning we were going to look at every aspect of this case, every aspect of this shooter’s life to determine – not just why did he take these actions, but who else knew about them, was anyone else involved?” Lynch said.

Salman, who has a young son by Mateen, was arrested at her home outside San Francisco, The New York Times reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement official. Salman has moved at least three times since the attack, attempting to avoid the news media, The Times said.

The daughter of parents who immigrated from the West Bank in 1985, Salman was repeatedly questioned by law enforcement interrogators after the club attack, telling them she was with Mateen when he bought ammunition and conducted surveillance of the club.

But she denied any involvement in the attack or any knowledge of her husband’s plans, she told the Times in an interview published on Nov. 1.

“I was unaware of everything,” Salman told the Times. “I don’t condone what he has done. I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.”Her husband, who was 29 at the time of his death, claimed a connection to or support for multiple Islamist extremist groups, including al Qaeda, Hezbollah, al Nusra and Islamic State, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told reporters a few days after the attack.

During the siege, Mateen spoke to a 911 emergency dispatcher and expressed solidarity with an al Nusra suicide bomber as well as Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.

Representatives of the FBI could not be reached immediately for more details.

The Orlando massacre came about seven months after a husband and wife who sympathized with Islamic extremists opened fire in December 2015 on a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 and wounding 22 others.

(Additional reporting by Frank McGurty and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Cynthia Osterman)

Dallas police chief says armed civilians in Texas ‘increasingly challenging’

Baton Rouge Protest

By Ernest Scheyder

DALLAS (Reuters) – The Dallas police chief stepped into America’s fierce gun rights debate on Monday when he said Texas state laws allowing civilians to carry firearms openly, as some did during a protest where five officers were killed, presented a growing law enforcement challenge.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown also gave new details about his department’s use of a bomb-carrying robot to kill Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old former U.S. Army reservist who carried out last Thursday’s sniper attack that also wounded nine officers.

A shooting in Michigan on Monday underscored the prevalence of gun violence in America and the danger faced by law enforcement, even as activists protest against the fatal police shootings of two black men last week in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Two sheriff’s bailiffs were shot to death at a courthouse in St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan, and the shooter was also killed, Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey told reporters.

By Monday evening, protesters were marching again in several large American cities, including Chicago, Sacramento, and Atlanta, where news footage showed a number of protesters being arrested after street demonstrations north of downtown.

President Barack Obama and others reiterated their calls for stricter guns laws after last month’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, but many conservatives responded that such measures could infringe on the U.S. Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms.

Texas is known for its gun culture and state laws allow gun owners to carry their weapons in public. Some gun rights activists bring firearms to rallies as a political statement, as some did at Thursday’s march in Dallas.

“It is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s (a type of rifle) slung over, and shootings occur in a crowd. And they begin running, and we don’t know if they are a shooter or not,” Brown said. “We don’t know who the ‘good guy’ versus who the ‘bad guy’ is, if everybody starts shooting.”

Seeing multiple people carrying rifles led police initially to believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.

Brown did not explicitly call for gun control laws, but said: “I was asked, well, what’s your opinion about guns? Well, ask the policymakers to do something and I’ll give you an opinion.”

“Do your job. We’re doing ours. We’re putting our lives on the line. Other aspects of government need to step up and help us,” he said.

‘SIMPLY MISTAKEN’

Rick Briscoe, legislative director of gun rights group Open Carry Texas, said Brown was “simply mistaken” in viewing armed civilians as a problem.

“It is really simple to tell a good guy from a bad guy,” Briscoe said. “If the police officer comes on the situation and he says: ‘Police, put the gun down,’ the good guy does. The bad guy probably continues doing what he was doing, or turns on the police officer.”

Police used a Northrop Grumman Corp <NOC.N> Mark5A-1 robot, typically deployed to inspect potential bombs, to kill Johnson after concluding during an hours-long standoff there was no safe way of taking him into custody, Brown said.

“They improvised this whole idea in about 15, 20 minutes,” Brown said.

“I asked the question of how much (explosives) we were using, and I said … ‘Don’t bring the building down.’ But that was the extent of my guidance.”

The incident is believed to have been the first time U.S. police had killed a suspect that way, and some civil liberties activists said it created a troubling precedent. Brown said that, in the context of Thursday’s events, “this wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me.”

The attack came at the end of a demonstration decrying police shootings of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and near St. Paul, Minnesota. Those were the latest in a series of high-profile killings of black men by police in various U.S. cities that have triggered protests.

In the shooting near St. Paul, the Star Tribune newspaper reported that the officers had pulled over 32-year-old Philando Castile because one of the patrolmen thought he and his girlfriend matched the description of suspects involved in a robbery.

In Dallas, a vigil was held for the slain officers on Monday evening.

In Chicago, images and footage on social media and news stations showed about 500 protesters marching through downtown after holding a quiet sit-in in Millennium Park that spilled into the streets and a rally near City Hall.

In Atlanta, media footage showed a number of handcuffed protesters being loaded onto a police bus surrounded by armed officers and emergency vehicles with lights flashing. Television station WSB-TV reported that police started arresting demonstrators marching on Peachtree Road at about 8:30 p.m.

In Sacramento, about 300 people were marching peacefully on Monday evening. Earlier in the day, in an incident not linked to protests, Sacramento police said officers fatally shot a man carrying a knife after he charged at police.

Johnson was in the U.S. Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015 and served for a time in Afghanistan. He had been disappointed in his experience in the military, his mother told TheBlaze.com in an interview shown online on Monday.

“The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” Delphine Johnson said. “He was very disappointed. Very disappointed.”

The Dallas police chief, who is black, urged people upset about police conduct to consider joining his force.

“Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about,” Brown said.

(Additonal reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, and David Beasley in Atlanta; Writing by Daniel Wallis, Scott Malone and Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Will Dunham, Peter Cooney and Paul Tait)

Emergency call log details horror of Orlando Nightclub shooting

Jose Louis Morales sits and prays under his brother Edward Sotomayor Jr.'s cross that is part of a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Pulse night club shootings in Orlando

By Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) – After a gunman opened fire at a nightclub in Florida this month, police dispatchers fielded calls from people inside who screamed of being shot, begged for help and spoke in hushed voices of the bloody scene around them.

The 911 operators’ notes, made public on Tuesday, are part of an Orlando Police Department incident narrative that began at 2:02 a.m. on June 12 with two words: “Shots fired.”

Over the next three hours, operators recorded hearing people screaming and multiple shots fired as Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

There were also periods of eerie silence.

“My caller is no longer responding, just an open line with moaning,” an operator wrote at 2:09 a.m.

The calls came from Pulse nightclub’s bathrooms, attic, dressing room and office. People reported being shot in the arm, shoulder, leg, chest, stomach, according to the police log.

One victim shot in the leg and rib was said to be “losing a lot of blood.”

Another note described someone in a bathroom whispering, “Please help.”

Nearly an hour into the rampage, a caller to the police emergency number told a dispatcher that Mateen was saying he was a terrorist and claimed to have bombs strapped to his body, according to the notes.

The claim that he had bombs turned out to be false, but it convinced police to breach the rear wall of the bathrooms and confront the gunman.

At 5:15 a.m., the incident log included another two-word note: “Subject down.”

The city of Orlando has not released audio recordings of the 911 calls or any video recorded by police cameras at the shooting scene. Several media organizations filed a lawsuit last week to force the release of that information.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a partial transcript of a 911 call made by Mateen from the club, and brief summaries of three other calls made by the gunman.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Additional reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

Latest gun control bid falters in Congress, Democrat sit-in ends

Democrats walk out of Capitol Hill after failing the gun control law

By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Another attempt at gun control faltered in the U.S. Congress on Thursday despite outrage at the Orlando massacre, as a proposed ban on firearms sales to people being monitored for links to terrorism barely avoided being killed in the Senate.

In a procedural vote, the Senate narrowly rejected an attempt to scrap the plan by Republican Senator Susan Collins to prevent guns getting into the hands of people on two U.S. government terrorism watch lists.

But the proposal looked short of the support it would need to advance through the chamber, and Republican leaders said the Senate would switch from debating gun control to other matters until at least after the July 4 holiday.

It was the latest setback for proponents of gun restrictions who have been thwarted for years on Capitol Hill by gun rights defenders and the National Rifle Association.

Frequent efforts at gun control have failed despite anger at mass shootings like the killings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and in San Bernardino, California, last year.

“Eventually this problem will get addressed again one of two ways: We find a breakthrough, which I will seek, or there will be another terrorist attack which will bring us right back to this issue. I hope we can do it without another terrorist attack,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who supported Collins.

A few hours earlier, Democratic lawmakers ended a sit-in protest in the House of Representatives over guns.

Fueled by Chinese food and pizzas, dozens of them stayed on the House floor all night, at times bursting into the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” before giving up their protest after 25 hours.

“It’s not a struggle that lasts for one day, or one week, or one month, or one year,” said Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia and a key figure in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. “We’re going to win the struggle,” said Lewis, who led the House sit-in.

Dramatic protests by legislators are rare in the U.S. Capitol and the sit-in underscored how sensitive the gun control issue became after this month’s Florida attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Opinion polls show Americans are increasingly in favor of more restrictions on guns in a country with more than 310 million weapons, about one for every citizen.

ORLANDO ATTACK

After a gunman pledging allegiance to Islamic State fatally shot 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, some senators had seen resistance to gun restrictions softening because the issue had partly become one of national security.

But Collins’ measure received only 52 votes in the 100-seat Senate test vote, short of the 60 votes that would be needed for approval in future Senate procedural votes.

While her plan could be revived next month, it is unclear if she has the momentum to overcome pro-gun rights forces in Congress who argue that gun control measures in Congress have been too restrictive and trample on the constitutional right to bear arms. Four other gun control measures failed earlier this week.

Collins, a Maine lawmaker, wants to forbid gun sales to anyone on the U.S. government’s “No Fly List” for terrorism suspects or the “Selectee List” of people who receive extra security screening at airports.

Despite the lack of legislation, the gun debate has stirred passions. The House Democrats’ sit-in brought an outpouring of grass-roots activity.

Jennifer Hoppe, deputy director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said that in less than 24 hours from Wednesday, about 130,000 calls were made from supporters of gun control to members of Congress.

First lady Michelle Obama backed the House Democrats’ protest.

“We have grieved for too many children and wept for too many families after shootings. Chicago. Tucson. Newtown. Charleston. Orlando. #Enough,” she wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

The Democrats were seeking votes on legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases, as well as measures to curb the sale of weapons to people on government watch lists

Republicans allied with the NRA gun rights group say that while they want to combat terrorism, they represent constituents who believe firmly in the constitutional right to bear arms.

“It’s a tough issue. For people like myself, who come from a hunting and fishing state, it’s pretty hard,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican who voted against Collins.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Timothy Ahmann, Timothy Gardner and Eric Walsh, Doina Chiacu; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)