Law enforcement officials are attempting to discover what led a couple to shoot and kill 14 people at a social services centre in San Bernardino.
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“Two followers of Islamic State attacked several days ago a center in San Bernardino in California”, the terror group said during its Saturday broadcast.
Crisis counseling teams were reaching out to families of those killed and wounded on December 2 in the fusillade from U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29.
On Friday, investigators said they were investigating the attack as an act of terrorism, which President Obama reiterated in a primetime address to the nation on Sunday night.
That possibility emerged late last week when it was disclosed that the Pakistani-born Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a Facebook post at about the same time she and husband Syed Farook launched the commando-style attack Wednesday that left 14 people dead at a holiday luncheon.
FBI Director James Comey would not say whether anyone affiliated with Islamic State communicated back with Malik, but he said there was no indication so far that the couple was part of a larger cell or directed by a foreign terror organization. They encouraged community members to come together and not live in fear.
Investigators are looking into a report that Farook had an argument with a co-worker who denounced the “inherent dangers of Islam” prior to the shooting, a USA government source said.
The US official said there is no clear evidence that Malik was radicalised overseas, or that she had radicalised her husband. Marquez bought the weapons in late 2011 and early 2012, a law enforcement officials told ABC News. At a minimum, he said, the militant group inspired the attack. When asked about Marquez at Monday’s news conference, Bowdich said he was not prepared to comment about Marquez at this time. A FRIENDSHIP Sandie Emperador, 30, said she saw Marquez and Farook working together on many occasions fixing cars in Farook’s garage. PHOTOS: Shooting rampage in San BernardinoThe FBI says Marquez is not a suspect at this point in the investigation, but agents did question him on Monday. Her father cut off contact with his family after a feud over inheritance, they told Reuters, and moved to Saudi Arabia when his daughter was a toddler.
“We feel a lot of sadness but we also feel ashamed that someone from our family has done this”, he said.
A year before she got married, she began wearing a scarf that covered all but her nose and eyes, the maid said.
Farook family attorneys have denied there was any evidence that either the husband or the wife harboured extremist views.
“There’s a serious investigation ongoing into what she was doing in Pakistan and in Saudi”, Representative Michael McCaul, the chair of the United States’ House Homeland Security Committee, said on Fox News.
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Beyond geopolitical issues leading Rizwan Farook towards extremism, his own family had been fracturing in recent years.
