The ex-wife of the shooter suspected of killing 50 people early Sunday morning in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub said the man was violent toward her when the two were married.

“He was not a stable person,” she told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.

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“He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

Law enforcement sources told CBS News the shooter was Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen from Port St. Lucie, Fla. He was killed at the scene.

The ex-wife said she met Mateen online about eight years ago. She moved to Florida and married him in March 2009.

"He seemed like a normal human being," she told the Post.

She said the suspect's family was from Afghanistan but that her ex-husband was born in New York.

She said he wasn't very religious and did not indicate in the first few months of their marriage anything having to do with radical Islam.

"He was a very private person," she said.

The marriage lasted only a few months, after the ex-wife's family learned that Mateen had assaulted her. Her parents took her out of the house and she has not been in contact with Mateen since.

"They literally saved my life," she said about her parents, according to the Post.

The two were officially divorced in 2011.

About the attack, the ex-wife said she is "still processing" what happened.

"I am definitely lucky," she said.

The attack, which occurred at a crowded nightclub in Orlando, Fla., is the worst mass shooting incident in U.S. history. It was carried out at a gay club.

Police said the shooter appeared to be "organized and well-prepared." An agent from the FBI's Orlando field office said there are "suggestions" the suspect may have had "leanings" toward radical Islamic ideology. But it was not immediately clear if the incident was inspired by foreign terrorism.

Read more from The Hill:

Father of reported Orlando shooter: Son possibly motivated by seeing two men kiss