Orlando mayor updates nightclub shooting toll to 50 dead, 53 more hospitalized

(Image credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

While early reports estimated the casualties at Sunday's mass shooting in Pulse nightclub at about 20 dead and 40 wounded, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said the true death toll is more than double that.

"Since the last update, we have gotten better access to the building — we have cleared the building," he said at a press conference late Sunday morning, "and it is with great sadness that I share we have not 20 but 50 casualties" plus another 53 who were injured and are now hospitalized.

Dyer has declared a state of emergency in Orlando and has asked Florida's governor to do the same statewide.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.