Farook was born in Chicago in 1987 and raised in southern California.
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(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong). Seccombe Lake is less than 3 miles from the Inland Regional Center, where the husband and wife entered a holiday party with assault rifles spraying bullets throughout the banquet room.
FBI investigators have pieced together more clues in the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook, a US-born Muslim, and his Pakistani immigrant wife Tashfeen Malik, in an effort to understand why they carried out the mass shooting at a Christmas work party in southern California that killed 14 people and wounded 21 others.
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?
Authorities wouldn’t say what, specifically, might be in the water, but said they had several leads that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik had been there around the time they killed 14 people and wounded 22 – one more than was known to be wounded until Thursday.
Marquez has not been charged with a crime, however, law enforcement probing the shooting are trying to determine if he and Farook “were plotting an actual attack” that was eventually aborted in 2012.
“And online…as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States”, Comey said during his testimony.
“They’re not communicating with a terrorist organization, they’re not doing those other things that we have typically looked for when we’re looking for terrorists”, said John Cohen, a former Homeland Security Department counterterrorism coordinator.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Malik was subjected to an in-person interview during the application process for a visa. She said the situation has been a “nightmare” and “tirelessly stressful”. He said the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be remiss not to follow up on every piece of information in the shootings. Agents have searched his house, seized potential evidence and interviewed him repeatedly.
Tommy Lopez, who said he became friends with Marquez after meeting at a punk rock show seven months ago, said he never talked about his wife and was not religious.
Investigators believe the couple were radicalized but they aren’t yet certain whether they developed jihadist intentions on their own or were motivated by external militant forces.
Multiple lawmakers raised the fact that neighbors saw suspicious activities but failed to mention them to investigators until after the attack. They asked about Marquez’s personality and interests, the co-worker said.
The family members of Enrique Marquez, the man linked to the San Bernardino massacre, said they were unaware he was married or that he had converted to Islam.
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Farook was not among those investigated at the time, KTLA-TV reported, but two USA law enforcement officials reportedly said that Farook knew Kabir.
