Hole in wall led Orlando hostages to salvation - and shooter Omar Mateen to his doom, riddled with gunfire from 14 police

The hole in the wall is about 1.2 metres high and 1 metre wide. It looks unassuming, but for dozens of men and women who had been cowering behind the wall for hours in mortal terror, it was their escape route to survival.

At about 5am on Sunday morning, three hours into the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, Orlando’s police chief, John Mina, made the portentous decision to send in a Swat team and blast a hole through the outside wall of the Pulse night club, where more than 30 people had already been killed and at least another 30 injured by the gunman. “It’s a tough decision to make knowing that people’s lives will be placed in danger,” Mina said on Monday morning, with notable understatement.

It is not known whether any of the hostages were killed by “friendly fire” from police in the operation, or if so how many, but for those who got out, Mina’s decision was life-saving. First a controlled explosion was carried out, but when it failed to breach the wall Mina sent in a Bearcat armoured vehicle to smash through the cinder blocks.

Immediately the floodgates opened. Traumatised club-goers, who had gone to Pulse on Latin night to dance to salsa and merengue but had ended up trapped in a whirl of horror, began pouring out.

“We were able to rescue dozens and dozens of people who came out of that hole,” Mina said.

One other person made use of the impromptu exit: the shooter, Omar Mateen, who emerged still brandishing the AR-15 assault rifle and handgun with which he had accomplished his rampage. For the past three hours, he had locked himself in a restroom on the opposite side of the club, along with about 15 club-goers whom he was holding hostage.

Details have begun to emerge about the extraordinary nature of those three hours, and the ordeal that so many people suffered. On Sunday evening, one of the survivors, referred to only by his first name – fittingly “Orlando” – described to a packed congregation of the city’s LGBT-supporting Joy Metropolitian Community Church how he had been among the hostages.