A woman who frequents the park said the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police stayed in the area overnight protecting the search scene.
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The pair, armed with assault weapons and handguns, opened fire on Farook’s colleagues from the San Bernardino Environmental Health Department during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center. Authorities believe the suspects – Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik – visited the park on the day of the shooting.
And as authorities comb through evidence five days after a massacre that President Barack Obama and law enforcement officials call an act of terrorism, there’s another key question looming over the investigation: Could anything have been done to foil the plot?
FBI investigators who are probing the San Bernardino shooting are taking a new look at Kabir, the two officials said.
The search at Seccombe Lake Park, about 2 miles from the assault site, could take days, David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of FBI’s Los Angeles office, told reporters.
According to the Los Angeles Times, digital evidence seized during a raid on the Redlands home shows Farook and Malik may have been planning a possible assault at a separate building at a nearby school or college. Agents have searched his house, seized potential evidence and interviewed him repeatedly. The FBI said the four people’ terror scheme was to join up with the Taliban and fight overseas. Two guns registered to Marquez were used by the perpetrators of the attack, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in what officials have described as a religiously-inspired workplace murder spree.
It appeared the two were scared off the idea by the November 2012 arrests of four Southern California men attempting to travel to Afghanistan to wage holy war.
A senior State Department official told CNN on Wednesday that Malik was not asked about jihadist leanings when a us consular official interviewed her in Pakistan for her fiancee visa application previous year.
Islamic State said last week the couple were among its followers.
Marquez hasn’t been charged with a crime and has been cooperating with authorities.
Militant groups sought out by Malik likely ignored her approaches because they have become extremely wary of responding to outsiders they do not know or who have not been introduced to them, sources said.
“Our hearts are heavy during this time, yet we must move forward”, James Ramos, chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said at a news conference Monday.
“That’s the biggest focus I think of how it would change the game, that they could actually arrange a marriage of two like-minded individuals, use the fiancée visa system to get in the country”, Graham said. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there’s “certainly nothing early in the investigation” suggesting there was “a tie to others”.
The attack by Farook, the U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, a Pakistani native he married in Saudi Arabia previous year, has heightened security concerns in the United States and become an issue in the US presidential campaign.
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“We are devastated about what happened, and are still processing this nightmare”, her family said in a statement to ABC News shortly after the shooting.
