The attorneys said the family was aware that Farook had guns but didn’t think much of that as he had acquired them legally and enjoyed target practice.
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Investigators are exploring Farook’s communications with at least one person who was under investigation for possible terror connections.
He and his wife built pipe bombs and stockpiled thousands of rounds of ammunition for the commando-style assault Wednesday on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues. The couple had a 6-month-old daughter; they left the baby with relatives Wednesday morning before the shooting.
Reporters found a crib, toys, a child’s book of the Quran, family pictures and shredded documents inside the home along the 50 block of North Center Street.
Authorities have said Tashfeen Malik pledged her allegiance to an ISIS leader in a Facebook post.
A neighbor who witnessed the search told NBC News that Marquez and Farook had been close friends since childhood but appeared to have grown more distant in recent months.
“Men don’t have a monopoly on terrorism or conducting violent acts”, she said.
JAMES COMEY, FBI Director: So far, we have no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group or form part of a cell. He added that now there was “a lot of evidence that doesn’t quite make sense”.
Members of the media crowd into the living room of an apartment shared by San Bernardino shooting rampage suspects Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik.
Aamaq, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group, says the San Bernardino shooters were “supporters” of the extremist group, though it stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attack.
Lawyers for the Farook family on Friday cast doubt on the reports of the ISIS pledge and said that there hasn’t been any real evidence that the couple has any “extremist tendencies”.
Even the media, which has uncovered greater detail on her husband Syed Farook, is still using a faceless avatar for her.
The couple opened fire at a holiday banquet for Farook’s co-workers before dying in a gunbattle with police Wednesday.
(CNN) – The San Bernardino, California, mass shooting is now being investigated as “an act of terrorism,” Federal Bureau of Investigation official David Bowdich said Friday.
“Based on the information and the facts as we know them, we are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism”.
Director Comey said that the investigation has indicated radicalization in the two shooters and the potential of being inspired by foreign terrorist organizations. The statement came in an online radio broadcast on a social services agency party in San Bernardino, the Mirror reported. The person was not authorized to speak publicly, and did so on condition of anonymity.
“No one gets upset at a party, goes home… and puts together this elaborate scheme or plan”, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said Thursday. It removed the profile from public view and reported its contents to law enforcement.
From Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah in Washington, D.C.
Tashfeen Malik had moved back to Pakistan five or six years ago to study pharmacy, Pakistani officials said.
They met face to face when Farook visited Saudi Arabia, where Malik had moved from her native Pakistan around the age of 18 or 20.
He said his brother, Malik’s father, had become considerably more conservative since moving with his family to Saudi Arabia about 25 years ago.
But a US government official said there was no evidence that Islamic State even knew who the shooters were.
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John Cohen, a former counterterrorism coordinator for the Homeland Security Department and a Rutgers University professor, said those people are harder to detect. The group did not directly take credit for the attack, but praised Farook and Malik as “martyrs”. He says that means different tools are needed to prevent those types of attacks.
