A third suspect who had been seen fleeing the scene was taken into custody, but police said they were not sure whether he had been one of the shooters.
Advertisement
At the same time, social media was filled with graphics encouraging prayer at this time of mourning for the country, by celebrities, networks and ordinary Americans, some of whom called for action to be taken after this year’s spate of shootings.
The Inland Regional Center is a three-building complex that houses a conference center and serves more than 30,000 people with developmental disabilities.
The sources said a condo in Redlands, Calif., that was being probed by a police robot, is connected to Farook.
FBI Los Angeles Director David Bowdich said during a news briefing that investigators had not ruled out a terrorist attack, saying, “It is a possibility, but we don’t know this yet”. “And we are not willing to go down that road yet”.
One suspect was struck by gunfire and one officer was injured in a confrontation hours after the mass shooting, San Bernardino police spokeswoman Sergeant Vicki Cervantes told reporters, adding that a second suspect might still be “outstanding”.
Chief Burguan said late Wednesday that authorities still were not comfortable pinpointing a specific motive, although he did say that there had been some sort of dispute at a the holiday party, after which Farook left the gathering before returning with guns.
Two suspects dead… It is not known at this stage if Syed Farook was one of two people shot by police or if he is being detained.
The attack took place in a conference area where the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health was renting space to hold a banquet, said Marybeth Feild, president and CEO of the centre.
Dina reports that Farook’s brother is also a subject of the investigation.
The Wednesday shooting was the worst massacre since a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook elementary school in the USA state of CT in 2012. Witnesses said at least two shooters opened fire, killing 14 people. Recent mass shootings in the United States have typically involved a lone gunman, often someone mentally unstable or consumed with rage.
Marcos Aguilera received a text from his wife who works at the Inland Regional Center.
“It was really, really super scary”, he told local TV, as he wept.
A law enforcement official told CNN the rifles were AR-15s or similar style weapons.
“What it says to me, it’s someone who’s familiar with the facility, it’s someone who knew exactly what room they were going to go to”.
“It was one hour until I learnt my daughter was OK”, she said.
Ron Plotkin of the San Diego center announced via Facebook that the precautionary decision to close Wednesday was made “for security for the staff, clients and services providers that frequent the SDRC offices”.
“The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world”, Obama told CBS News.
In the scores of mass shootings that have occurred in the US over the last 15 years, almost all of them have involved an attacker acting alone.
The Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton tweeted: “I refuse to accept this as normal”.
Advertisement
Ted Alcorn, research director for Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit organization that advocates gun control, said the incidents with multiple victims were just a small subset of everyday gun violence in America.
