Attorneys for the family of a California shooter are cautioning the public against rushing to judgment about terrorist connections to the attack. Reporter: Federal law enforcement officials believe it was the 29-year-old mother, tashfeen malik, who initiated the attack.
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The FBI announced Friday it is investigating the mass shooting as an act of terrorism.
Mr Comey said the investigation was in its early stages and that there was still “a lot of evidence that doesn’t make sense”.
Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State on the same day she and her husband killed 14 people in San Bernardino.
The Islamic State-affiliated news agency Aamaq said Friday the two shooters were “supporters” of the group, but it stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attack.
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”. He said the phones could prove to be a “golden nugget” in the investigation.
Farook is said to have been an isolated individual with few friends and Malik has been described by family as a “caring, soft-spoken” housewife.
Farook had been teased by co-workers about his beard, Chesley said.
Farook had no criminal record, and neither he nor his wife was under scrutiny by local or federal law enforcement before the attack, authorities said. “They are trying to destroy their digital finger prints”, he said.
Police officers conduct a manhunt after a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, Dec. 2, 2015. Around the time of the attack, Malik allegedly made the post on Facebook under a different name, then deleted it, but investigators were able to recover it.
Given the cache of weaponry they were stockpiling in their suburban home, however, police believe the couple was planning something – they just aren’t sure what. The person was not authorized to speak publicly, and did so on condition of anonymity.
The company discovered the Facebook account Thursday.
– From Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah in Washington, D.C.
Malik was a Pakistani native who was living in Saudi Arabia when she met Farook, who was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in California.
Ambulances respond to the shooting, however, officials say “up to three” suspects escaped in a dark colored SUV. – If it happened before Malik came to the US, did counterterrorism authorities miss any warning signs when they investigated her before approving her visa? She had moved back to Pakistan five or six years ago to study pharmacy, Pakistani officials said.
One lawyer for the couple’s family said links between Farook and potential terror suspects were “tenuous” at best.
He said his brother, Malik’s father, had become considerably more conservative since moving with his family to Saudi Arabia a quarter century ago.
Tashfeen Malik, 27, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, died in a shootout with police after the killings in the southern Californian city, east of Los Angeles.
Law enforcement officials have long warned that Americans acting in sympathy with Islamic extremists – though not on direct orders – could launch an attack inside the US.
Should the investigation prove that the attack was indeed inspired by militant Islamism, it would count as the most serious such attack since September 11, 2001. Chesley also said that his client’s named is being smeared in a moment of increasing intolerance, as some presidential candidates are calling for all Muslims to register with the government.
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Last May, Malik and her husband rented a townhouse in Redlands, about seven miles from the attack site, said Doyle Miller, their landlord and owner of the townhouse.
