Police continue to investigate a mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino that left at least 14 people dead and another 17 injured on December 2nd.
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An FBI Los Angeles spokesperson told CBS News the investigation at the home was complete.
David Bowdich, head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said “a number of pieces of evidence” point to terrorism and that the agency was focused on that idea “for good reason”. The lawyers warned against jumping to conclusions about the attackers, repeatedly emphasizing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had found no evidence to indicate the shooters were connected with a terrorist group.
Authorities have said that Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, stockpiled 12 pipe bombs, tools to make more explosives and well over 4,500 rounds of ammunition at the home.
Farook’s mother lived with the couple, the attorneys said, explaining that, when the shooters left the house Wednesday morning, they told her they were going to the doctor because he had the stomach flu. It was on this account that authorities reportedly found a Facebook post in which she pledged her loyalty to ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagghadi. Separately, Reuters reported that a Facebook profile established under an alias by Malik was removed by the company for violating its community standards, which prohibit praise or promotion of terrorist acts. He declined to elaborate further.
Farook was born and raised in the United States and Malik was a Pakistani national who had spent time living in Saudi Arabia.
“There is no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group or form part of a cell”. “There is no indication that they are part of a network”.
Bowdich said no other suspects are in custody, but “it is possible there may be some in the future”.
Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister and has acted as a family spokesman, expressed his utter dismay at the couple’s actions and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.
Investigators are looking into a report that Farook had an argument with a co-worker who denounced the “inherent dangers of Islam” before the shooting, a United States government source said.
She spoke broken English and her primary language was Urdu, he said, adding, “She was very conservative”.
It was also in Redlands on Wednesday afternoon, that police encountered the couple in their black SUV, and engaging in a gun-battle in which more than 450 bullets were exchanged and in which the couple died.
Farook had worked for five years for the county health department as a restaurant inspector. Malik married Farook, an American of Pakistani descent, in August 2014 and the couple had a baby daughter six months ago. That was about the time the first 911 calls came in and when the couple were believed to have stormed into the San Bernardino social service center and opened fire.
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CNN, quoting officials, earlier said Farook had been in contact with known terror suspects overseas and had become radicalised after marrying Malik in Saudi Arabia past year, although an imam at a local mosque he attended said Farook showed no signs of that.
