News

Nation/World

The couple who killed 14 people and wounded nearly two dozen others this month in California chatted secretly of jihad long before they married or entered the United States, not on social media as politicians have claimed, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday at a Manhattan law enforcement conference, where he urged the public to remain alert for signs someone close to them is being radicalized online. 
Comey said those messages between Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were direct, private messages well before their attack in San Bernardino, California. 
“So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom,” he said, referring to the reports suggesting that Malik had spoken openly on social media about jihad and that background checks had not detected those comments.
Comey made his statements at 1 Police Plaza, first at the NYPD Shield Conference, which included several hundred security personnel who work in the private sector and who collaborate with the NYPD, and again at a news conference.
“The threat comes from social media, which revolutionized terrorism,” Comey said.
Comey revealed for the first time that the shooting deaths last July of five people after attacks on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tenn., have now officially been classified as a terrorist attack. The assailant in that attack, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Hixson, Tenn., was killed by police gunfire after he shot and killed four Marines and a sailor and wounded three other people.
The White House on Wednesday said President Obama plans to visit San Bernardino on Friday and meet with the families of shooting victims there.
Comey said he understands Americans are jittery, but citizens should try to channel their awareness into vigilance, not panic. He said the threat from the Islamic State group, known as ISIS or ISIL, has not changed — but it’s vastly different from how terror cells operated around the time of the Sept. 11 attack. “Your parents’ al-Qaida is a very different model and was a very different threat that what we face today,” he said.
For example, he said, some Twitter messages cannot be “unlocked” by law enforcement, making it impossible for them to track communications between terrorists. 
Comey said Farook and Malik communicated via encrypted email which investigators have not been able to crack.
“The bottleneck here is there are a lot people who have designed these products and they can’t access it themselves because that is what the market requires,” Comey said. He said he hoped further public debate on encryption will convince the public to accept that unlocking encryptions is needed by law enforcement to battle global terrorism. 
Comey said the messages relayed from foreign terrorist groups are as succinct as “I will kill where I am.” Comey said such messages have inspired homegrown terrorists, who are receiving these messages on their phones daily.
Comey also urged the public not to “freak out” because they are anxious about another homegrown terrorist attack. Instead, he said, “We need the public to be aware and not to be fearful, but instead have a healthy awareness of their surroundings and report something if they see something. Tells us [law enforcement], because we need your help, and then live your life and let us do our job.”
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton echoed Comey’s comments. “To prevent crime, disorder and now terrorism we must go where it begins . . . in the minds of those who hate and feel victimized. People who see this are moms and dads.”
Bratton said the terrorists are “propagandizing messages that are slick and professional and are inspiring attacks.”
With the AP and Washington Post

New York

NYTERR17

FBI chief James Comey says Calif. killers used encrypted email, but not social media

FBI chief: Calif. killers used encryption, not social media

NYTERR17_WEB

Both of the San Bernardino shooters, who together killed 14 people and injured 21 last week, had been radicalized “for quite some time,” though it was unclear who first adopted extremist ideology.
FBI assistant director in charge David Bowdich, speaking at a news conference yesterday afternoon in California, also said that investigators found 19 pipes in Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik’s Redlands apartment. Initially, authorities had found 12 pipe bombs.
“That is not 19 pipe bombs, but 19 pipes that could be turned into pipe bombs,” he said.
Investigators are looking into what led Malik, 29, and Farook, 28, to commit what President Barack Obama called “an act of terrorism.” 
According to media accounts, Farook’s father of the same name said his son had become obsessed with Israel. He said the younger Farook supported ISIS, including the creation of an Islamic State, and had obtained firearms, all to his father’s chagrin, the reports say.
The father’s comments support Bowdich’s statements. “We believe that both subjects were radicalized — and had been for quite some time,” he said.
Bowdich added that the couple had recently engaged in target practice at local gun ranges — and within days of the shooting — calling the rampage “a human tragedy.”
“Yes, we do have evidence that both of the subjects participated at target practice at some ranges within the metro area or within the Los Angeles area . . . within days of this event,” Bowdich said.
The couple was killed in a shootout with police hours after the massacre.
He said some 400 people have been interviewed about the case, including Rafia Farook, the male shooter’s mother. She lived with her son, his wife and their 6-month-old daughter, now orphaned.
Investigators have collected more than 320 pieces of evidence related to the killings, and much of it has already been transferred to Washington, D.C., for further study. 
Bowdich said law enforcement was trying to find out if there were other people involved in the planning or financing of the shooting. 
He said investigators are poring over video and other evidence.
Bowdich downplayed the possibility of overseas ties, saying, “We are looking at these two individuals and we are beginning to focus, to build it out from there.” 
John D’Angelo, assistant special agent in charge for The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said five guns were recovered in relation to this investigation and that all were purchased from federal firearm licensees in California between 2007 and 2012. 
Farook purchased three of them, D’Angelo said. His friend, Enrique Marquez of Riverside, California, bought the other two. 
D’Angelo said authorities do not yet know how the two firearms ended up in the hands of Farook and his wife. 
Reports say Marquez checked himself into a mental health facility after the attack.
The reopening of much of San Bernardino’s government offices yesterday signals an effort to return to normalcy for a community that has been in shock and mourning since Wednesday.
“To honor them, to express our gratitude for their unimaginable sacrifice, we have to fight to maintain that ordinary,” San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford said yesterday of the victims. “We can’t be afraid of our lives, of our community, of our neighbors, of our co-workers.”
Pakistani intelligence officials said Malik attended a religious school while living in Pakistan: Al-Huda International Seminary’s founder has been criticized for promoting a conservative strain of Islam. The school has no known links to extremists.
 With The Associated Press

World

USSANB08

San Bernardino shooters Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook were radicalized, FBI says 

San Bernardino shooters were radicalized

USSANB08_FQS_WEB

As religious leaders in the San Bernardino area prepare for an interfaith prayer vigil Monday, some worry that revelations of links between terrorist groups and the killers of 14 people in the California city may set back years of efforts there to dispel misconceptions about Islam.
Authorities say Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to Islamic State and that her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, communicated with people who had ties to terrorist organizations.
Mustafa Kuko, director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, California, where Farook worshipped from 2012 to early 2014, has for years invited non-Muslims to his mosque for open houses and other events, and he regularly meets with local civic leaders. 
“We have built a good relationship with the community,” he said. But, Kuko added, the latest mass shooting may cause some to become more suspicious of Muslims.
Rabbi Suzanne Singer, of Temple Beth El in Riverside, about 10 miles from San Bernardino, visited Kuko at the mosque Friday to show support, just as Kuko did for Singer when neo-Nazis picketed the synagogue in 2009.
“So many people unfortunately will tar all Muslims with this label of terrorist,” she said, adding that Kuko and his community are “lovely people.”
“I don’t think all of this horrible terrorism is going on because of Islam,” she said. “It’s a perversion of Islam and an excuse to commit these horrible acts.”
Even so, Singer believes fear and suspicion of Muslims will increase in the wake of the massacre. “People don’t understand Islam,” she said.
Singer and other clergy in the region are planning Monday night’s vigil at Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Cathedral as a sign of unity.
The rabbi rejected assertions by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and others that those close to Farook lied when they said there were no indications Farook and Malik were capable of such carnage. Family members of non-Muslim murderers frequently say similar things, she said.
Kuko said Farook was reserved and withdrawn at the mosque. 
“Knowing him, I don’t think his sister and his brother or anyone would know what he was intending,” he said.
Dr. Mohammad Hossain, imam of the Islamic Center of Redlands and a doctor whose office is less than a quarter-mile from the shooters’ apartment, said religious leaders often can’t spot radicalization.
“People pray at a mosque and they leave,” he said.
Kuko said if any congregant were to express support for terrorism, he first would try to use readings from the Quran and sayings of the prophet Muhammad to explain that such beliefs violate fundamental Islamic teachings.
“If that did not change his mind, we wouldn’t hesitate to call the FBI, because if he’s a real threat — I don’t care if he’s Muslim or is not — he’d have to be stopped,” Kuko said.

USMUSL06

Religious leaders fear mass shooting will  ‘tar all Muslims’

Leaders fear rampage will ‘tar all Muslims’

USMUSL06_WEB

Islamic State praised the perpetrators of the Southern California mass shooting as “soldiers” of the group’s cause in a radio broadcast, but did not claim responsibility for directing the attack. 
In an English-language broadcast posted online Saturday, the terrorist organization referred to married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik as “two soldiers of the Khilāfah,” or caliphate, and said they died “in the path of Allah.” It stopped short of claiming a direct role in the rampage.
Farook, 28, and Malik, 29, killed 14 people and wounded 21 in a military-style attack with assault weapons during a holiday party of Farook’s co-workers Wednesday in San Bernardino. The attackers died hours later in a shootout with police.
The Islamic State broadcast asked Allah to accept both attackers as “shuhadā” or martyrs, and referred to the victims as “disbelievers.”
Comments from the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, came as investigators worked to clarify what caused a young couple with a 6-month-old daughter to commit the deadliest mass shooting in the United States since the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 26. FBI officials said Friday they are investigating the San Bernardino attack as an act of terrorism.
Details about Pakistan-born Malik emerged in interviews with relatives, who said she once wore Western clothes but grew more conservative over the past three years. Lawyers for Farook’s family said she covered herself with a burqa, chose not to drive and avoided being in the same room as male in-laws.
Farook had contact with at least five people with ties to terrorism in the United States and overseas, and Malik pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Facebook post shortly before the assault, sources said.
FBI Director James Comey said there were signs the shooters had been “radicalized” and drew inspiration from foreign terrorists, but no evidence has emerged tying them to a “cell or network.”
President Barack Obama will address the nation at 8 p.m. Sunday from the Oval Office about the investigation and efforts to protect the nation from terrorism, the White House said.
Federal agents served a search warrant on a home early Saturday morning in Riverside, California, as the FBI probed how the couple obtained the two assault rifles used in the attack, officials said.
Authorities said the weapons were legally purchased, but the .223-caliber Smith &amp;amp;amp; Wesson M&amp;amp;amp;P 15 rifles were illegally modified to be fully automatic with magazine clips of 30 bullets. 
FBI officials had already interviewed the person who bought the rifles but returned to search his home Saturday. Two people were detained at the home as a safety measure, but no arrests were made, authorities said. ABC News identified the buyer as a former neighbor of Farook’s.
Obama on Saturday was briefed on the latest details of the federal investigation, with the White House saying he learned of “several pieces of information that point to the perpetrators being radicalized to violence.”
Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch were among the officials briefing Obama. They did not release the specific information, but according to a news release, they told the president “they had as of yet uncovered no indication the killers were part of an organized group or formed part of a broader terrorist cell.”
Obama, the White House said, “directed his team to take all measures necessary to continue to protect the American people, which remains his highest priority.”
In his weekly radio address, the president urged patience as investigators put together a “full picture” of the attackers’ motives.
“It is entirely possible that these two attackers were radicalized to commit this act of terror,” Obama said. “And if so, it would underscore a threat we’ve been focused on for years — the danger of people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies.”
San Bernardino on Saturday began creeping back to normal. Authorities began allowing people who had escaped the attack at the Inland Regional Center to retrieve their vehicles.
While city police kept a “heightened alert” status — meaning all available officers work alternating 12-hour shifts — the largely commercial neighborhood in the southern end of the city, with strip malls and chain restaurants, resembled any other weekend day. 
Signs of the massacre lingered in the growing memorials at either end of the police barricades around the site. People frequently pulled over to leave candles or flowers.
Farook and Malik rented a town house in Redlands, a few miles from the attack scene. Farook, who was born in Chicago and raised in Southern California, had worked as a restaurant health inspector for San Bernardino County since 2012. Malik, who was born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, came to the United States on a fiancee visa in 2014.
Investigators found more than 4,500 rounds of ammunition and 12 crude pipe bombs in the couple’s home, suggesting they may have been planning additional attacks.
Farook’s family saw no signs that the couple were extremists, said David Chesley and Mohammad Abuershaid, lawyers for Farook’s mother and three siblings. They described Malik as “just a housewife” who was quiet, like her husband.
With John Asbury, Laura Blasey and AP

USSAN06

San Bernardino massacre praised in Islamic State radio broadcast

ISIS praises massacre, doesn't claim responsibility

USSAN06_WEB

Paul LaRocco

SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF. — In recent days, authorities in and around San Bernardino have had to swat away a steady stream of rumors, hoaxes and false alarms based off a singular sentiment — fear of another terror attack.
There were social media posts that a movie theater was targeted; that the region’s largest shopping mall had been locked down; that law enforcement was telling people to stay away from public spaces.
There was also a UPS facility that halted business due to a suspicious package.
All of the threats were untrue or unfounded, but the fact that a holiday party for civil servants — inside a rented room at a suburban social services center — could be the site of the deadliest terror attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, has many in this region on edge.
“I think everyone is really freaked out,” Stephen Tibbets, a criminology professor at California State University, San Bernardino, said in an interview Saturday. “The fear factor is huge.”
Fourteen people were killed and 21 injured when Syed Farook, who worked with many of the victims as a county health inspector, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire inside a conference room at the Inland Regional Center. 
Farook had contact with people linked to overseas terrorist groups while Malik used a Facebook alias to pledge her allegiance to an Islamic State leader, authorities have said.
Had the attack Wednesday yielded the same number of dead and wounded, but been attributed solely to a workplace grievance, Tibbets said the community’s larger anxiety may have been less palpable.
“But people can’t believe this cache of guns and bombs were here in their community,” he said, referring to what the FBI seized from the suspects’ rented Redlands town home.
The San Bernardino police force has been on “heightened alert” status since the attacks, meaning all officers work 12 hour shifts, get 12 hours off, and must return again. Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told Newsday that he had initially considered returning his officers to normal shifts Friday.
“That’s until this stuff exploded about people being terrified,” Burguan said. “And if there’s any indication that people are terrified, I’ve got a need to probably continue that increased presence.”
Still, Burguan and the county sheriff, John McMahon, have repeatedly reiterated that there are “no credible threats.”
After all of the online hysteria, McMahon put out statements on social media that said authorities have not asked residents to stay away from any public places, and warned them to only trust verified law enforcement accounts.
On Saturday, groups of residents from the region flocked to the outskirts of the attack site, setting up various memorials crowded with balloons, flowers and candles, dotted with signs of support for both victims and law enforcement.
Standing outside of one of those memorials, Allen Harris, 76, of Los Angeles, said the specter of another attack is something now on the forefront of his mind.
“I think it could happen anytime,” said Harris, a retired shipyard worker who traveled more than an hour to San Bernardino to pay his respects to the victims. “I don’t think this could be the last — and you never know what can pop up.”

USFEAR06

Southern California terror attack has region on edge

Attack has L.A. area 'freaked out'

USFEAR06_WEB

REDLANDS, Calif. — The home where the San Bernardino terrorist couple lived is filled with the trappings of everyday suburban American life — Macy’s and Bed, Bath &amp;&nbsp;Beyond coupons — and items from their Muslim faith — including a list of local prayer times.
Television cameras and reporters swarmed the married couple’s Redlands, California, townhome on Friday after the FBI finished its search and released the property to the landlord.
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, their 6-month-old daughter and Farook’s mother had lived in the two-story home.
The FBI left an inventory list of the items the agency seized — including computers and electronics from the home, and 4,000 rounds of ammunition, more than a dozen pipe bombs and bomb-making materials stored in the garage.
The inventory listed a search of the couple’s black Lexus, including receipts for U-Haul, shooting targets and packaging from a Go-Pro Camera.
Reporters and photographers were elbow to elbow Friday in the home, which appeared to have been left in a hurry. Dirty dishes sat in the sink and clothes were left scattered in bedrooms.
Though tapestries with Arabic lettering decorated the walls — and a Quran sat on a coffee table in the living room — there were more signs in the $1,200-a-month-apartment of the couple’s young child than of their religion.
Boxes of diapers were piled in the hallway while colorful play mats and jumpers sat on the floor near a treadmill. In the baby’s room, the couple left a children’s book, “Goodnight stories from the Quran.”
Federal agents had combed through the property since Wednesday, when the couple shot and killed 14 people and wounded 21 others at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The townhome showed the signs of forced entry — including broken glass and punched-out drywall.
On Friday, reporters and photographers collided with one another on the narrow, green-carpeted stairs as each sought to get a look at the couple’s belongings.
The landlord, Doyle Miller, said the FBI had ransacked the home, which he rented to couple in May, while taking evidence.
“The FBI, they turned everything over,” Miller said. “There’s nothing left.”

USHOME05

Home of San Bernardino terrorists opened to reporters

Terrorist couple’s townhome opened to media

IMGD5EG_WEB

Matthew Chayes

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio attended Friday evening prayers at a Queens mosque, promising “to protect this community” against a backlash in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, California, slayings by husband-and-wife killers.
Speaking at Jamaica Muslim Center before kneeling worshippers in kufi prayer caps, de Blasio said “this is a religion of peace” that the NYPD would keep safe from reprisals. 
“The few in any community who have chosen a negative path and a violent path do not define the rest of us,” de Blasio said in remarks that elicited applause. 
He added: “We reject the notion that we will be torn apart.”
De Blasio made his remarks before the prayer service began. 
“We reject hatred in all its forms, and we need to be clear that the cycle of hatred is such a dangerous one. Incidents occur and they are tragic and they are awful, and some people are tempted to lash out, and we know that members of the Muslim community are deeply concerned,” de Blasio said at the front of the men’s prayer room. 
Hundreds of Muslims, mostly from Queens, packed the room and overflow spaces to listen to the mayor. 
“Everybody’s anxious, and they’re scared what happened,” said Mahmudur Rahman, chairman of the center’s board of trustees. 
De Blasio, flanked by NYPD officers, elected officials and other aides, promised “to deepen the relationship” with the city’s Muslims. 
“Whatever he said is from the heart, and it was really, really helpful for the Muslin community,” said Mahmood Alauedin, 50, of Queens Village, who owns a gas station on nearby Hillside Avenue. 
Alauedin said the attackers in California “have to be” mentally ill to have killed so wantonly. 
“There are a lot of crazy people,” he said. “Normal people cannot do that.” 
The attack in San Bernardino this week, which killed 14 and injured 21 others, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, the FBI said. 
Earlier Friday, de Blasio announced that three Syrian refugee families had arrived in the city to live, while Texas is in court to challenge the Obama administration’s right to place them in that state. 
“While the state of Texas pursues a baseless attempt to resist their resettlement in the state,” de Blasio’s office said in a statement, “we welcome them with open arms to the city of immigrants.”

NYMUSL05

De Blasio promises to protect city Muslims from backlash

De Blasio: Muslims will be protected from backlash

IMG3SNU_WEB

SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF. — The police department in San Bernardino, Calif., site of the Wednesday mass shooting being investigated as a terrorist attack, is one of the only major law enforcement agencies in its region without a full-time presence on an FBI-led joint terrorism task force.
For years, the department had a detective embedded in the task force covering the Inland Empire — the two geographically vast counties east of Los Angeles — but earlier this decade, as a severe budget crisis enveloped the city, never replaced him following his promotion, sources said.
While the suspects in this week’s attacks, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, were not on the FBI’s radar — and no one has said that the massacre at a holiday gathering of county workers that killed 14 and wounded 21 could have been stopped — San Bernardino’s reduced role in the task force highlights the difficult decisions that local police leaders have had to make as they grapple with a shrinking rank of officers.
“That was the chief’s decision,” said a police source, referring to one of several former department leaders during a period of attrition and instability. “At the time, we all thought it would keep going.”
Instead, while the department has kept a relationship with the task force, including training and briefings on potential cases, officers have balanced any work with the group with other duties.
Asked about the issue Friday, the current San Bernardino police chief, Jarrod Burguan, who has been credited with increasing department morale, downplayed the significance of no longer having a full-time task force member working out of FBI offices. 
“Sometimes we change where we put full-time resources, but we’ve never not had a relationship with them,” Burguan said. “I don’t know if there’s a need for full-time.”
The FBI’s Inland Empire Joint Terrorism Task Force in recent years has taken credit for thwarting plots including local men attempting to join al-Qaida and provide support to a group that hoped to kill Americans in Afghanistan.
In a news release announcing one of those cases, the local task force, a satellite of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, was identified as having members from all of the other large departments in the Inland region, including the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Riverside Police Department and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“It’s an invaluable asset to any community,” said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman with the FBI in Los Angeles, noting that members from other departments “are deputized FBI agents” who work together with the bureau to chase leads.
She noted, however, that the task force’s training “is not limited to full-time members.”
“We maintain liaisons with all departments in the area,” Eimiller said.
San Bernardino police’s sworn officer ranks have shrunk from 302 in 2005 to 225 in 2014, according to FBI data. The city, with a population of about 210,000, has for years dealt with a severe budget crunch. 
It was among the hardest hit by the 2008 foreclosure crisis and subsequent recession, and in 2012, filed for bankruptcy protection. That caused many officers to seek jobs elsewhere and has limited the hiring to replace them, all while the city has historically dealt with some of the largest per-capita violent crime rates among California cities with more than 100,000 people.
Jim Bueermann, a former police chief in Redlands, Calif., the smaller neighboring city where Farook and Malik rented a home – and kept a cache of ammunition and explosives – said he had two of his officers serve part-time on the joint terrorism task force during his tenure. He said the collaborations “are designed to be a conduit from the intelligence community back to the locals, and from the locals back into the intelligence community.
“It’s a really valuable part of the system,” said Bueermann, now president of the nonprofit Police Foundation in Washington, D.C. “But I will tell you, it is so hard to identify these people, especially if they’re self-radicalized.”
Still, the law enforcement source in San Bernardino said that, despite the fact that many terrorist attacks cannot be predicted, that some city police officials over the years had expressed concern about losing a full-time member.
“They never wanted to have something happen in San Bernardino and have egg on their face,” the source said.

USCUTS05

San Bernardino cops no longer on terror task force full time

San Bernardino cops no longer on task force full time

USCUTS05_WEB

This story was reported by John Asbury, Robert E. Kessler and Paul LaRocco. It was written by Zachary R. Dowdy.
SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF. — Syed Rizwan Farook had contact with people linked to terrorist organizations overseas, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, pledged allegiance to an Islamic State leader in a Facebook posting shortly before the couple went on a shooting rampage, sources said Friday.
The FBI formally announced it was investigating the Wednesday holiday party massacre at San Bernardino’s Inland Regional Center as an act of terrorism.
FBI Director James Comey said there were indications that the killers had been “radicalized” and drew inspiration from foreign terrorists, but no evidence had emerged so far linking them to a “cell or network.” 
Federal agents have conducted more than 300 interviews in the investigation into what motivated Farook, 28, and Malik, 27, to kill 14 people and wound 21 others — many of them Farook’s colleagues at the San Bernardino County Health Department, sources said.
Investigators are being aided by resources of the CIA and the National Security Agency, which tracks and tries to monitor and record communications of suspected terrorists.
Shortly before the rampage, Pakistan-born Malik pledged her loyalty to the head of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a Facebook posting, the sources said. 
Farook has had some communication with at least five people in the United States and overseas who are believed to be associated with terrorist organizations. The five had been under some loose FBI scrutiny but were never charged with any crimes, the sources said. The organizations included the Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria and Shabab, an Islamist group in Somalia.
Despite the carnage the couple created, a leading theory is that they were lone wolves who radicalized themselves.
The pipe bombs they left behind were relatively unsophisticated and failed to explode, the sources said. The devices had a type of construction that could be found many places on the Internet or in INSPIRE, the online magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
“We are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism,” David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said at a news conference in San Bernardino Friday, citing evidence of “extensive planning” for an attack.
Bowdich said investigators have recovered two cellphones which the couple had crushed and discarded, and were culling information from the devices.
The specter of terrorism ties — especially to international actors known for their brutality — gave the investigation into the shootings a new focus Friday as authorities scrambled to determine whether the couple had planned to carry out more attacks and were involved with others.
After the massacre, Farook and Malik were shot and killed in a fierce firefight with police in the nearby city of Redlands.
A Facebook official told The Associated Press that Malik praised the leader of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in a post at 11 a.m. Wednesday, just before the couple attacked the center. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to be quoted by name, said the company discovered the account Thursday. 
Facebook removed the profile from public view and reported its contents to law enforcement, the official said.
“Right from the start, the FBI was pursuing this as terrorism,” Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said Friday. “Early on they knew he had been in contact with people under FBI investigation.”
King, chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterintelligence and Terrorism, said he received a nonclassified briefing on the investigation from the FBI on Thursday night.
King said federal agents were investigating both domestic and international contacts with the couple to determine if a series of attacks was being planned.
“The larger issue is concerning whether they were acting alone and if these murders are part of a cell in a coordinated series of attacks,” he said. “Or this may have been two people who did this on their own. All this is being looked at.”
The couple’s online correspondence was found to be inspirationally based rather than directed at a specific terrorism plot, King said.
Comey said investigators are “going through electronic evidence” the killers attempted to destroy, searching for more clues to their motivations, which remain undetermined.
“There’s a lot of evidence in this case that doesn’t make sense, so we are trying to understand it,” he said.
The discovery of the large cache of weaponry in the couple’s Redlands town home after their deaths gave new insight into how officials said the couple pulled off the worst mass shooting since Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 adult staff members at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in December 2012.
During an extensive search of Farook and Malik’s $1,200-a-month rental home, the FBI seized computers and electronics owned by the couple, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition and bomb-making materials.
Reporters allowed to enter the home later, saw tapestries with Arabic lettering on the walls and a Quran on a coffee table in the living room. There were also plenty of signs of the couple’s 6-month-old daughter: boxes of diapers were piled in the hallway.
The seized pipe bombs were unsophisticated and crude, similar to explosive devices used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, sources said.
Farook worked as a county health inspector and attended the holiday gathering at the center before leaving for unknown reasons, authorities said. He later returned with his wife. Both wore masks and tactical gear as they stormed the building toting assault weapons, officials said.
A dozen of the dead and 18 of the wounded were county employees, police said. About 75 to 80 people were in the room at the time of the attack.
Records show Farook was born in Illinois and lived in Southern California for at least the last nine years. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last year, returning with Malik, whom he met online, officials said.
The FBI said she was allowed to enter the United States on a K-1 visa, which is granted to people planning to marry in this country.

USSAN05

San Bernardino shooting probed as ‘act of terrorism,’ FBI says 

FBI: Calif. shooting probed as ‘act of terrorism’    

USSAN05_WEB

Screams of pain. Fire alarms wailing and sprinklers flooding the room from above.
The smell of “fresh gunpowder in the air.”
The scene inside the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California — where a husband and wife killed 14 people and wounded 21 on Wednesday morning at a county health department gathering — was something that no amount of training could ready one first responder for. 
“The situation was surreal,” said San Bernardino police Lt. Mike Madden, who was driving nearby, on his way to lunch, when he received the call. “With an active shooter, you talk about sensory overload, they try to throw everything at you to prepare you for dealing with them: what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, what you’re smelling.
“And it was all of that and more,” he continued, after a pause. “It was unspeakable, the carnage that we were seeing, the number of people who were injured, the number who were already dead, and the pure panic on the faces of the individuals needing to be safe.”
Madden, who normally oversees police records and dispatch units for the 230 officer department, recounted his experience at an evening news conference held Thursday night in the shadow of the crime scene. With little to update on the potential motive of suspects Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, authorities chose to highlight the terror caused by the couple — who were slain later Wednesday in a shootout with police. 
The Inland Regional Center conference room, where the attack largely took place, was being rented Wednesday by health department employees for a combination training seminar and holiday luncheon. It was right as the event was transitioning to the party that Farook, a health inspector, and his wife, entered in masks and opened fire. 
“There was a Christmas tree in there, all of the tables were decorated,” Madden said. “It just seemed so senseless: here’s people going into their holiday festivities and now they’re dealing with that.”
At first, it was just Madden and several other early arriving officers who tried to coax victims out to safety and check for what they then believed could be additional shooters.
But soon, manpower had come from around the region, in the hundreds. 
“It was truly overwhelming to see all of the agencies who got here, and got here in a hurry,” Madden said.

USSCENE04

In San Bernardino center, first responders faced surreal scene

San Bernardino carnage ‘was unspeakable,’ officer says

USSCENE04_XY4_WEB

Many of us find it uncomfortable to think about, much less say. But what if it turns out that the Muslim man in the husband-and-wife team that massacred 14 people in San Bernardino was, indeed, radicalized toward terrorism?
That was where law enforcement appeared to head yesterday, with some officials saying Syed Rizwan Farook had been in contact with people the FBI was investigating for international terrorism. His trips to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the huge arsenal amassed by him and wife Tashfeen Malik, and recent changes in his behavior all became dots splayed on a profile map that need to be connected.
But even if the picture is filled in unambiguously, if the FBI determines this was not the result of a workplace grievance but an act of terrorism fueled by Farook’s own interpretation of Islam, we must be wise in how we respond. There are things we must do, things we must consider, and things we cannot do — while remaining clear-eyed and dispassionate, putting aside the emotions that engulfed us Wednesday.
We must remember the attackers were two people, and not succumb to the temptation to demonize a religion. Many Muslims were terrified something like the San Bernardino slaughter would happen. And now they fear retribution and disparagement will follow. Many simply want to live their lives and not be defined by their religion. We must not marginalize them.
We also must not be naive, and understand there will be others in this country like Farook. The assailants who killed five servicemen in July in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 had profiles similar to Farook’s.
And we also must acknowledge that the San Bernardino attack is different from so many other mass slayings because of the context of our times. Radical Islamists have expressed their intent to attack Western countries, and have done exactly that. But Farook’s stunned colleagues said they did not see this coming. That unpredictability adds to everyone’s fears. Who’s next?
So we understandably want to keep people from becoming radicalized, and stop those who already are. But we cannot betray our nation’s values as we do that. Some proposals being bandied about — such as surveilling all mosques, registering and tracking all Muslims, or blocking Muslim refugees from entering the country — would do just that.
After each mass shooting, there is a call for smart gun control, anything to acknowledge we have to defuse a culture awash in guns. We say this understanding nothing reasonable would have stopped Farook from obtaining guns. And that any terrorist can learn online how to make a bomb. But we can say enough is enough by taking some commonsense steps, such as banning people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns, instituting background checks for gun show purchases, banning assault weapons, funding more mental health treatment, and allowing the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence. 
House Speaker Paul Ryan says this country is headed in the wrong direction. We agree. And one thing most Americans want is more restrictions on guns. We must learn, and respond to what happened in San Bernardino — not by lashing out in fear, but by acting out of wisdom.

Opinion

Editorials

VPRADICAL04

How will we respond to the San Bernardino shooting?

Editorial: Respond wisely to San Bernardino shooting

VPRADICAL04_WEB

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — They were environmentalists, health inspectors, parents and science fiction fans. Some were deeply religious; one was on the cusp of marriage. A few were at the beginning of their professional careers.
Before the spray of bullets killed or wounded almost three dozen people, many of the victims of Wednesday’s shooting in San Bernardino were enjoying a relaxed moment at a workplace holiday party. 
Of the 14 people killed and 21 injured, many knew or worked with 28-year-old gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, according to accounts from their friends and family.
As the investigation revealed more about Farook and his wife, who also took part in the massacre, the names and stories of victims and survivors emerged. 
On a sidewalk several blocks from the shooting scene, Van Nguyen sat on the pavement late Thursday morning, sobbing, as loved ones formed a wall around her. Nguyen’s daughter, Tin Nguyen, 31, of Santa Ana, in Orange County, was one of those killed, the family said.
Tin Nguyen, like Farook, was a food inspector with the San Bernardino County health department, said her uncle, Phu Nguyen. He said his niece was “getting ready to get married” next year.
“She was excited about trying on her wedding dress,” Phu Nguyen said.
Another employee, Nicholas Thalasinos, 52, had worked at the department for about 12 years and was an inspector alongside Farook, a friend said. 
Thalasinos, formerly of New Jersey, moved to California after he met his wife in an online chat forum for fans of the 1980s science fiction TV series “Beauty And The Beast,” said friend Neal Hallford of San Diego. Hallford called Thalasinos and his wife Jennifer “soul mates.” 
“He was a very sweet guy. He was kind of quiet, very thoughtful individual,” Hallford said. He described Thalasinos, who according to news reports was a Messianic Jew, as a “renaissance man” who loved reading and science fiction. 
“He was someone who was a very courageous individual,” Hallford said. “He wanted the world to be a better place.”
Larry “Daniel” Kaufman, 42, of San Bernardino, ran the coffee shop at the Inland Regional Center where the shooting occurred, according to the Los Angeles Times. 
Kaufman’s boyfriend Ryan Reyes told the Times he had worked at the social services center for about five years. 
Friend David Schoelen, of Riverside, said he met up with Kaufman at comic and cosplay conventions, which they both frequented. They first met at a science fiction and horror convention for the LGBT community. Kaufman often developed highly creative original costumes on his own and was known to have wildly colorful hair, Schoelen said.
“He was an eccentric goofball, at least in those settings,” he said. “He was very gregarious, he had a big laugh.”
Shooting victim Michael Raymond Wetzel, 37, left behind six children, ages 1 to 14 — three from his first marriage and three from his second, according to Pastor Rod Akins.
“He was an amazing guy,” Akins said. “Michael had really brought some healing and closure to their family, and unity and spiritual leadership.”
Wetzel, who lived in Lake Arrowhead with his family, was a longtime member of the Church of the Woods, which is crowd-funding donations of money and meals for the family. Early Thursday, Wetzel’s wife Renee posted a new Facebook profile picture — a Bible quote in white italics with a green background: “When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.” 
Wetzel worked as a supervising environmental health specialist for San Bernardino County, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise. He attended Cal State San Bernardino, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
“Michael was the most amazing person. He was my best friend and an incredible father who was loved by all,” Renee Wetzel said in a statement. “I didn’t know a better person. He loved his work and his family so very much. Without him, this family will never be the same.”
Sierra Clayborn, 27, from Moreno Valley, had been working in the county’s Environmental Health Department since January 2013, according to People magazine. She graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2010 with a degree in biochemistry, according to the Press-Enterprise.
On Thursday, friends and family left tributes on Facebook. Her sister, Tamishia Clayborn, vented her pain after she learned of the shooting: “RIP Baby sis I love you more than you ever knew. You were taken too soon. My heart is broken. I am completely devastated ...”
Damian Meins, 58, of Riverside, had spent 28 years working for the county and had recently returned to working for the Environmental Health Department after retiring in 2010, according to the Times. He had two grown daughters, and was known for dressing up as Santa for the children at St. Catherine’s School in Riverside, the Times reported. 
The tragic shooting touched lives on the East Coast too: New York Giants safety Nat Berhe tweeted early Thursday that his cousin was one of the 14 who were killed in the attack, but initially didn’t name him. 
“Just got word that one of my cousins was among the 14 killed yesterday, I’m so sick right now,” Berhe tweeted early Thursday. “My cousin’s name is Isaac Amanios and he was a great human being. Thoughts and prayers are with my family back in CA.”
Berhe also sorrowfully reflected on the proliferation of mass shootings across the country. “The true terror is that this keeps happening. I still can’t believe it. Take a moment to think of the families hurting right now,” he wrote.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Amanios, 60, lived in Fontana, where Berhe was born. According to the Times, Amanios worked for the county health department and is survived by his wife and three adult children.
Benneta Bet-Badal, 46, was a mother of three from Rialto headed into work to give a presentation on Wednesday morning. She was born in Iran and fled to America when she was 18 to escape Islamic extremism that took hold there after the Iranian Revolution, according to a GoFundMe page set up to benefit her children. Bet-Badal, her husband and children, ages 10, 12 and 15, smile warmly and embrace from a red-walled living room in front of a Christmas tree in a photo displayed on the page. 
Bet-Badal graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in chemistry, according to the fundraising page, and she worked for many years as an inspector for the county health department.
“Benneta left the house Wednesday morning, excited about a presentation she was scheduled to give to her supervisors and coworkers at their annual meeting,” according to the fundraising page. “It is the ultimate irony that her life would be stolen from her that day by what appears to be the same type of extremism that she fled so many years ago.”
In the photo on a fundraising page set up for Robert Adams, 40, of Yucaipa, Adams and his wife beam as they hold their baby daughter Savannah in their lap on a haystack, surrounded by pumpkins and gourds. In another photo, Adams and his wife, Summer — his high school sweetheart — grin at a fancy dinner table, Robert in a bright red tie. 
Adams, who according to the Los Angeles Times was an environmental health specialist with San Bernardino County, was responsible for inspecting pools and food facilities during construction. He was devoted to his wife and enamored by his daughter, who is 20 months old, according to the Times.
The comments on the GoFundMe page reflect the personality of an outgoing man who knew how to make people smile. And many who donated to the GoFundMe page reminisced about the friend they made through Eve Online, a popular online roleplaying game. 
“We always talked about life as we played video games together,” said a GoFundMe user named Shawn Brady. “I had taken a break from Eve Online about 2 months ago after 11 years of nonstop gaming. We still chatted, but just not the 5 to 8 hour nonstop. He was truly one of the best friends I have ever had.”
“All day we waited for news that he was safely coming home to his beautiful wife Summer and his absolutely precious daughter, Savannah. It is now confirmed this will not be happening,” reads a statement on the fundraising page, organized by “a group of momma friends, all bonded by a birth month, who don’t know what else to do.
Rallying around the young family and raising money for their wellbeing in Adams’ absence, the statement said, “is how we make sense of what makes NO sense.”
Five others were killed in Wednesday’s shooting: Shannon Johnson, 45, of Los Angeles; Aurora Godoy, 26, of San Jacinto; Harry Bowman, 46, of Upland; Yvette Velasco, 27, of Fontana; and Juan Espinoza, 50, of Highland.

USVICS04

San Bernardino shooting: Identities of victims emerge

Victims of San Bernardino shooting ID’d

USVICS04_WEB

Tom Rock

The shootings in San Bernardino this week have hit the Giants close to home. Safety Nat Berhe, a second-year player who is on injured reserve, tweeted Thursday that he had learned one of the victims in the shooting was a relative.
“Just got word that one of my cousins was among the 14 killed yesterday, I’m so sick right now,” he posted.
The San Bernardino County Sun reported that Isaac Amanios, 60 of Fontana, California, was one of the victims.
Berhe was born in Fontana and graduated from Colton High there. On Wednesday, the day of the shootings, he tweeted a map that showed how close the shooting area was to an office building where he says his parents work.
This is the second mass shooting to personally affect a member of the Giants this year. Wide receiver Corey Washington, who was with the Giants in training camp, knew one of the victims of the June shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and was close friends with his cousin.
“The true terror is that this keeps happening,” Berhe posted on Thursday. “I still can’t believe it. Take a moment to think of the families hurting right now.”

Sports

Football

New York Giants

SPBERHE04

Giants’ Nat Berhe: Cousin killed in San Bernardino   

Giants’ Berhe: Cousin was killed in shootings

IMGZW80_WEB

Nassau County police are getting more firepower and training to protect citizens in active-shooter and terror situations after the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, officials said Thursday. 
Training for about 200 officers will begin Friday with 150 new semi-automatic Sig Sauer M400 SWAT rifles. The weapons have a longer range, are more accurate and allow police to match the firepower of shooters wielding assault weapons, authorities said.
The SWAT rifles, which cost $1,100 apiece, arrived Monday in a shipment that officials expedited after the recent terror attacks in Paris, acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter said. 
“This today is us taking another step forward to ensure that our cops are properly equipped and properly trained to deal with any situation they face,” Krumpter said Thursday afternoon before officers demonstrated the weapons at the department’s gun range in Hempstead. 
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, who attended, said shooters like the couple who stormed the San Bernardino social services facility and killed 14 people, are “not there to take hostages and negotiate for something.” 
“They’re there to murder citizens,” he said. “So this response and terminating those active shooters as quickly as possible clearly will save lives.”
A committee began researching the SWAT rifle purchase about 11 months ago after the department’s active-shooter training revealed it was necessary to have weapons with those capabilities, Krumpter said.
The rifles had been scheduled to arrive next year, but the department expedited the delivery after the Paris shootings, he said. Each holds a 30-round magazine and has an effective range of 600 meters, police said. 
A group of 32 Nassau officers will be the first to receive the three-day training, which will continue for about four months, enhancing the active-shooter training the department has done for past five years.
More than 100 patrol officers and officers in special units will receive the weapons. Officers will carry them in squad cars, along with recently issued heavy body armor and tactical helmets, police said. 
Suffolk County police will enhance their active-shooter training, which the department started shortly after the 1999 Columbine shooting that left 13 dead, said Chief of Department Stuart Cameron. 
The training includes teaching and empowering patrol officers to respond effectively at shooting scenes. Officers learn how to initially assist in mass casualty situations and work with detectives to track down and learn key information about active shooters.
“Our preparedness has been comprehensive, but it’s ongoing. You can never say you’re prepared and stop your preparedness efforts,” Cameron said. 
Cameron said the department’s unofficial motto is: “If it can happen there, it can happen here, and we need to be prepared for it.”

Long Island

LICOPS04

Nassau police getting new weapons, training to respond to mass shootings

Nassau police get SWAT rifles, training for mass shootings

LICOPS04_25G_WEB

John Asbury

To family members and neighbors, there were no clues of the carnage to come.
Syed Rizwan Farook worked as a health inspector in San Bernardino, California, while his Pakistani bride cared for their 6-month-old baby. 
Farook, 28, grew up in nearby Riverside and enjoyed working on vintage cars. He had a clean record, marred only by a traffic ticket. By most accounts, he lived a peaceful, quiet life.
That’s why relatives and others were shocked to learn that Farook and his wife, Tashfeed Malik, 27, had amassed an arsenal in their town house about 2 miles from where they went on shooting rampage Wednesday at a holiday party, killing 14 people.
After Farook and Malik were killed hours later in a gunfight with police, investigators searching their Redlands town house found more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition and what amounted to a pipe bomb factory in the basement. 
Nobody, it seemed, saw it coming.
“He was not on the radar screen of our agency until yesterday,” San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said Thursday morning. 
To friends and relatives, Farook and Malik seemed like ordinary parents who had just had a baby — even registering for an infant safety seat and diapers. The morning of the shooting, they calmly left their daughter with his mother, a family spokesman said.
Family members have condemned the attack while expressing disbelief that Farook was involved. 
“I am very sad people lost their lives. I am in shock something like this could happen,” said Farook’s brother-in-law Farhan Khan. “I have no idea why he would do something like this.”
Farook met Malik on an online dating site for Indian relationships and marriages, authorities said.
In his profile from six years ago, he said he worked for the health department and came from “a religious, but modern family of four” and enjoyed reading religious books, working on vintage cars, traveling and “doing target practice” in his backyard with his younger sister.
FBI officials said Farook traveled to Pakistan in July 2014, and returned with Malik, who entered on a K-1 visa, which allows citizens to bring a foreign-born fiancee to the U.S. and marry them within 90 days. The fiancee can then apply for permanent resident status.
“She was not his wife at the time, but she is now,” said David Bowdich, FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office. “He went to Pakistan at some point and she came here on a Pakistani passport.”
During the same trip, the couple spent nine days in Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. After he returned, friends said Farook began growing a beard. 
According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, Farook, who went by Rizwan, attended La Sierra High School in Riverside, graduating a year early in 2004. He was a member of the school’s Muslim Club, according to a 2003 yearbook.
California State University, San Bernardino officials said Farook graduated in 2010 with a degree in environmental health. He worked for the past five years as a public health inspector for San Bernardino County, primarily issuing restaurant health grades and violations. His salary was $55,000 last year, according to payroll records. 
The FBI is conducting a counterterrorism investigation with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, but officials stressed that terrorism has not been determined to be the motive for the massacre. Also being examined is potential workplace conflicts, authorities said.
Court records show Farook, who was born in Illinois, grew up in suburban tract home in Riverside as the oldest of four children.
It was a troubled household, according to court records.
His mother, Rafia Farook, accused her husband, also named Syed Farook, of domestic violence in 2006. In seeking a restraining order, she said her husband was drunk and dropped a television set on her, then pushed her and tried to hit her outside the home.
“He is always mad, drinking all day, shouting at me and my kids for no reason,” Rafia Farook said in her declaration. The couple divorced in 2008.
Police on Thursday were searching a number of addresses tied to the younger Farook. The Redlands town house was rented by the couple, but it wasn’t immediately known how long they had lived there.
Farook had been living recently in Corona, about 30 miles southwest, with his wife and baby daughter, according to a neighbor. 
“I’m just completely shocked,” Robert Vargas told the Press-Enterprise. “Not only because of what happened, but because it’s so close to home.”
With Gary Dymski, AP

USCOUP04

San Bernardino shooting suspects, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, had 6-month-old daughter, reports say

Portrait emerges of couple in San Bernardino massacre

USCOUP04_WEB

Wednesday’s shooting massacre by a married couple later killed in a police shootout was likely a terrorist act and possibly the first salvo in what investigators suspect was a string of planned attacks by the pair, according to several sources. 
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27 — are suspected of opening fire at a holiday gathering at the Inland Regional Center, killing 14 and wounding 21, before the two were shot and killed in a fierce firefight with police in the nearby city of Redlands. 
The discovery of the large cache of weaponry in the couple’s home after their deaths gave new insight into how, officials said, the couple pulled off the worst mass shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. 
But several crucial questions remain unanswered about the pair’s motives, backgrounds and possible collaborators. 
And in mostly working-class San Bernardino — about 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles — the families of those still unaccounted for a day after the shooting, spent Thursday grieving over the stunning loss of loved ones after authorities released the names of the dead. 
While authorities have yet to pin a motive to the attack, sources pointed to the numerous explosives and weaponry, including thousands of rounds of ammunition found at the couple’s home and in the SUV where they died during the shootout as suggestions of terrorist motivations. 
A high-ranking New York police official said Wednesday’s attack will likely turn out to be terrorism — but the question remains whether the attack was directed from outside the country or was a homegrown act by Farook and Malik. 
The bombs found at the center were unsophisticated and crude, similar to explosive devices used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, according to the sources. 
Farook also had occasional contact with people who were under loose FBI scrutiny as being interested in jihad, the sources said — but they also cautioned that the investigation into the couple’s motives was ongoing. 
San Bernardino city Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said Thursday the gathering was a Christmas luncheon after a morning of training for employees of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. 
Officials said Farook worked as a health inspector for San Bernardino County and attended the gathering before leaving for unknown reasons. He later returned with his wife. Both wore masks and what police described as “dark tactical gear” as they stormed the building toting assault weapons, officials said. 
“Based upon what we have seen and based upon how they were equipped, there had to be some degree of planning that went into this,” Burguan said. “I don’t think they just ran home, put on these types of tactical clothes, grabbed guns and came back on a spur-of-the-moment thing.” 
A dozen of the dead and 18 of the wounded were county employees, Burguan said. About 75 to 80 people were in the room at the time of the attack, he said. 
Lt. Mike Madden, one of the first responders to the center, recalled a scene that was hard for even a seasoned cop to believe until screams of pain and dead bodies confirmed it. 
“The situation was surreal,” Madden said at news conference Thursday night. 
Madden said the scene before him was like nothing he’d ever witnessed in his 24 years as a cop. The room was quiet when he first entered. He smelled gun smoke lingering in the air. Then came shrieks of pain and panic, Madden said. A bullet had pierced a fire sprinkler, showering water on the floor of the room, and the dead and wounded there, only adding to the unreal scene. 
“It was unspeakable, the carnage we were seeing,” Madden said. 
Other San Bernardino police said Thursday that tips about Farook’s involvement came from someone at the party who recognized him and alerted investigators. Police traced Farook’s name to an SUV with Utah plates that he had rented in the San Bernardino area days earlier, Burguan said Thursday. 
Police spotted the SUV and followed it, Burguan said before officers and the couple engaged in a violent volley of gunfire on a Redlands street. The SUV stopped on its own and “rounds came out of the back of the car from the female that was in the back,” Burguan said. 
“And then the male driver got out and fired at the officers from the street as well,” he said. Officers ducked and crouched behind police vehicles as they returned fire, killing both, Burguan said. 
The search of the couple’s rented house in Redlands found 12 devices similar to pipe bombs, equipment for bomb-making, 2,000 rounds for a 9 mm pistol, 2,500 rounds for a .223 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds for a .22 long rife. An unexploded pipe bomb was also found at the party scene, he said. 
The chief said he was not aware of any law that restricted the amount of ammunition a person could have, and the two assault rifles and two semi-automatic pistols recovered by police were purchased legally. 
New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said his department has been receiving briefings from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and that the city’s police department was on a heightened sense of awareness after the attack — the worst mass shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. 
“The thing we are all interested [in] here is what was the actual motive, which will help us significantly,” Bratton said “Was this an act of inspired terrorism, or related to the workplace situation we have heard so much about? Critical for us in the NYPD: What exactly was the motivation of these two young people?” 
President Barack Obama said in a live broadcast from the White House Thursday that the workplace relationship between Farook and the victims made the investigation “complicated.” 
“There may be mixed motives involved in this,” the president said. He said, however, that it was “possible this was terror-related.” 
Records show Farook was born in Illinois and has lived in Southern California for at least the last nine years. He has no criminal record, Burguan said. 
He recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with Malik, whom he met online, officials said. 
The FBI said she was in the United States legally on a K-1 visa, which is granted to people planning to marry in the United States. 
The couple had a 6-month-old baby they had dropped off with the child’s grandmother hours before the shooting, telling her they had a doctor’s appointment, according to several published reports. 
In an interview with Newsday Thursday, Burguan said investigators are piecing together the couple’s stockpiling of ammunitions, weapons and explosives in a painstaking effort to bring a timeline into view of their planning. 
Beyond confirming that two of the guns had been legally purchased several years ago, Burguan said, “that’s the stuff that starts to get really complex.” 
“It’s hard to build that history,” he said. “We just don’t know now.” 
When asked about the level of involvement of Farook’s wife — this mass shooting is unique for the involvement of a woman — Burguan made clear that she was not a mere observer. 
“She was engaged in the gunbattle with our police officers,” Burguan said of the confrontation that led to the suspects’ deaths. “And there were two shooters at the scene. Yes, she fired weapons.”

USSAN04

Tracing background of Syed Rizwan Farook, Tashfeen Malik

Sources: Evidence points toward terrorism in massacre

Number of injured in San Bernardino shooting rises to 21, police say

Newsday

A San Bernardino County worker left a holiday party “angry” and stormed back to festivities with a partner, assault weapons and tactical gear to spray gunfire Wednesday morning, killing 14 and wounding 17 at a social services facility, authorities said. 
The two shooters were fatally gunned down in their getaway vehicle by police after a chase through the cities of Redland and San Bernardino and identified late in the night as U.S-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and a woman who was either his wife or his fiance, Tashfeen Malik, 27. 
Farook was an environmental specialist in the health department, where he had been working for five years, said Chief Jarrod Burguan of the San Bernardino Police Department at 1:15 a.m. news conference. 
“He did leave the party early under circumstances that were described as angry in nature,” Burguan said. 
He left the Inland Regional Center, where the county workers had offices, and about 11 a.m. local time, he and Malik opened fire at the party and laid three “pipe bomb type” explosives that were neutralized about 9 hours after the shooting, the chief said. 
Burguan said it appeared there were only two shooters and that a man detained had been seen running from the direction of the suspects’ sport utility vehicle and may not have been involved. 
The police chief said investigators still do not know the motive but said “we have not ruled out terrorism.” 
There were no reports that Malik had been at the party and that the pair said anything before shooting, the police chief said. 
“Based upon what we have seen and based upon how they were equipped, there had to be some degree of planning that went into this,” Burguam said. “I don’t think they just ran home, put on these types of tactical clothes, grabbed guns and came back on a spur of the moment thing.” 
As the federal and local law enforcement began piecing together what happened, they faced at least four crime scenes — the shooting scene, a Redlands apartment listed under the couple’s names, the street where the two were shot dead and Farook’s office. 
Officers had secured the office building and only just begun gathering evidence there, the chief said. 
Authorities recovered two assault rifles and two semi-automatic handguns, the chief said. 
Reports Wednesday night said at least one of the weapons was purchased legally by someone authorities believe is connected to the attack. 
Hours after the shooting — the worst since the grade school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 — federal and local law enforcement officers continued searching for evidence. 
Television news reports late Wednesday night showed what appeared to be a robotic device operated by law enforcement approaching the apartment looking for explosive devices. 
Just after 11 p.m. several reports said 10 of the wounded were in critical condition. Three others were listed in serious condition. 
At a news conference just before midnight Wednesday at the Greater Los Angeles Council of American-Islamic Relations and attended by relatives of at least one of the suspects, the shooting was condemned. 
“I spoke to him about like a week ago. I have no idea, why he would do that,” said Farhan Kahn, who identified himself as Farook’s brother-in-law. “Why would he do something like this? I am in shock myself.” 
The carnage at the Inland Regional Center began at about 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, when the two masked shooters entered a conference room inside the three-building complex and opened fire, police said. 
The facility provides services for adults and children with developmental disabilities. 
<h3>‘They came prepared’</h3> 
“They came prepared to do what they did, as if they were on a mission,” Burguan said. 
The Inland Regional Center’s board president and chief executive, Marybeth Feild, told the Times the San Bernardino County Public Health Department had been hosting a banquet in the center’s conference room where the shooting took place. 
The paper reported that a dispute at the gathering may have precipitated the attack. 
Terry Petit, the father of an employee who works at the center, choked back tears as he read texts from his panicked daughter, who hid in the building after hearing the gunshots, The Associated Press reported. 
“People shot,” Petit read. “In the office waiting for cops. Pray for us. I am locked in an office.” 
Hundreds of survivors were evacuated by the busload as local, state and federal law enforcement personnel — including SWAT teams — scrambled to find suspects, secure the scene and respond to any subsequent attacks. 
Glenn Willwerth, who owns a business across the street from the facility, told AP he went outside with a gun when he heard the shots. There, he saw people carrying an injured woman outside, while a pair of empty boots stood on the sidewalk near a trail of blood. 
David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said officials still were investigating possible motives for the attack, including workplace violence and terrorism. 
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Bowdich said. 
“I am still not willing to say that we know for sure,” he said. “We are making some adjustments to our investigations. It’s a possibility but we do not know for sure.” 
<h3>Vehicle found after tip</h3> 
Police searching for the black SUV seen leaving the scene of the shooting said they found the vehicle after receiving a tip about a residence in the nearby city of Redlands. 
Later, with police looking for a dark SUV, officers staking out the Redlands residence, saw a vehicle matching that description leave. They pursued the SUV until it crashed. 
A gunbattle between the two suspects and about 20 police officers broke out at about 3 p.m., authorities said. 
An officer was grazed by a ricocheted bullet and was taken to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries, according to reports. 
As police searched for the shooters, the city of San Bernardino — a city of about 214,000 roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles — placed its city government buildings and courthouses on lockdown and streets blocked off. 
County schools also were on lockdown until students were dismissed at the regular time. 
The shooting “has shaken the core of our community,” San Bernardino Mayor R. Carey Davis said in a statement. 
The attack comes less than a week after three people were killed in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado. 
Wednesday’s shooting was the deadliest since 26 children and adults were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012. 
News of the massacre lit up social media and sparked a sobering reaction from President Barack Obama. 
“We have a pattern of mass shootings in the country with no parallel to anywhere in the world,” he said during an interview with CBS News. 
“There are steps we can take to improve our odds. . . . We should never think this is something as normal in any course of events.”

USSAN03

2 shooters kill 14 at San Bernardino holiday party, police say

Police chief: 2 shooters kill 14 at holiday party

IMGYJQE_WEB

San Bernardino shooting timeline: How it all happened

California Shootings

This time the helicopters hovered over San Bernardino. And we watched another scene of slaughter unfold. 
On Wednesday, it was at a service center for people with disabilities in California. Before that it was a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, a college campus in Oregon, a church in South Carolina, and movie theaters, schools and supermarkets across this country. 
As the evening progressed, authorities would not rule out terrorism. But the San Bernardino police chief called it at least an act of domestic terrorism, and it was for the way it makes us feel. At least 14 people died. At least 17 were injured, some shot, some hurt fleeing the carnage. 
One group that charts mass shootings says there have been at least 355 incidents this year. We can quibble about the number, but not about their cumulative impact. The randomness of these incidents is chilling. The efficiency of the killing is alarming. The fact that some people have decided that slaughtering their fellow humans is an appropriate way to address their grievances or make their point is appalling. The prospect that other disaffected people could be inspired by the same coverage that horrifies the rest of us is scary. 
This happens in no other functioning democracy. What does this say about our country? What does it mean that we are shocked and we grieve and we condemn, and then as a culture we do absolutely nothing to change anything? 
And how do we react as individuals? Do we change the way we live our lives? Do we simply shrug? Or do we go on, increasingly on edge? 
Wednesday, the violence that seems to define the nation visited San Bernardino. The cries from those victims must become the cry from the soul of America. This . . . must . . . stop.

VPSHOOTING03

San Bernardino is the latest community struck by gun violence. When will this end?

Editorial: What do shootings say about our country?

VPSHOOTING03_WEB

Update on mass shooting in San Bernardino

Complete coverage: Shooting in San Bernardino

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