Teen suspects kill three in San Diego mosque attack
He was a father of eight. He showed up to work Monday morning at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County, and by the time the day was over, he was dead, and so were two other men. But the people who knew him, and the officials who investigated what unfolded in those frantic minutes, are telling anyone who will listen that it could have been far worse.
“It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference. “Undoubtedly he saved lives today.”
The security guard, whose name authorities have not yet publicly released, is being credited with playing what officials called “a pivotal role” in preventing the attack from becoming “much worse.” Three men died outside the front of the building. The number, as grim as it is, might have been much higher.
The two people who carried out the attack were 17 and 18 years old. They are also dead, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, found in a vehicle just blocks from the mosque, not long after the shooting stopped. By the time police located them, the violence was already over. What remained was the wreckage of it: three victims, a traumatised community, children being led hand-in-hand through a car park by adults trying to shield them from a scene they should never have been anywhere near.
The Islamic Center campus is not just a mosque. It houses the Al Rashid School, where children attend classes in religion and language. Monday was a school day. Aerial footage captured the evacuation, small figures, linked hands, moving carefully through the parking area while officers swarmed the grounds. Nearby schools were placed on lockdown.
The morning had already been moving toward something terrible before the first shot was fired.
Around 9:30 local time, the mother of one of the suspects called police. Her son had left the house, taken her car, taken several of her guns, and left with a friend. Both were dressed in camouflage. She told police she was worried he might be suicidal.
What he left behind told a different story. A note. It contained what Wahl described as “generalised hate rhetoric and hate speech.” There was no specific target named in the note, no mention of the mosque, no individual singled out. But the direction of the hatred was clear enough, and investigators are now treating the attack as a presumed hate crime, citing both the nature of the target and writings attributed to one of the suspects.
“The motive for the attack was unknown,” Wahl said, while noting the hate crime presumption.
Police tracked the car to a local high school where one of the teens was enrolled, and then to a shopping mall. They were still in conversation with the mother, and only blocks from the mosque, when the shooting began at 11:43 local time.
A witness who lives nearby told CBS he heard what sounded like up to 30 gunshots from a semi-automatic weapon, a first burst of about a dozen, a pause, then another dozen or so. He called 911. Police, already in the area, arrived within five to ten minutes.
What they found at the mosque were three men with gunshot wounds outside the front of the building. Officers moved inside immediately, following active shooter protocols, sweeping room by room. Then more calls came in. The suspects had driven away and opened fire from their vehicle at a landscaper nearby. The landscaper was not hit, a bullet may have deflected off his hard hat, though police said that detail was yet to be confirmed. By the time officers reached the second scene, the two teenagers were dead.
Imam Taha Hassane, the director of the Islamic Center of San Diego, stood before cameras and spoke with the weight of a community in mourning and in shock.
“It is extremely outrageous to target a place of worship,” he said. The facility, he added, “is a house of worship, not a battlefield.”
The timing has sharpened the pain of what happened. The Muslim community is in the final days of preparation for Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, one of the holiest occasions on the Islamic calendar, commemorating the obedience of Prophet Ibrahim. It is a time of gathering, of celebration, of families coming together. Instead, a community is now planning funerals.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he was “horrified by today’s violent attack” at a centre “where families and children gather, and neighbors worship in peace and fellowship,” adding that the state “will not tolerate acts of terror or intimidation against communities of faith.”
President Donald Trump, asked about the shooting during an unrelated White House event, called it “a terrible situation” and said his administration would be “going back and looking at it very strongly.”
The FBI has appealed to the public for any information that could assist the ongoing investigation.
Three men went to their mosque on a Monday morning and did not come home. One of them spent his last moments trying to stop something catastrophic from happening. His name has not yet been released. He had eight children.
Source: BBC
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