The Muslim couple were killed hours later in a gunbattle with police.
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Investigators said they found 19 pipes that could have been turned into bombs at the couple’s apartment, rather than the 12 previously reported.
Mounting signs that extremist ideology played some role in Wednesday’s attack continued to reverberate in the campaign for the November 2016 USA presidential election.
Authorities said last week that the Pakistani-born Malik, 29, pledged her support for the Islamic State group and its leader under an alias Facebook account shortly before the assault in San Bernardino.
The characterisation of the husband and wife team, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, came as FBI investigators were leaning away from the theory that Malik, who declared allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook around the time of the attack, had led her US-born husband to the violence. “I want you to every day be grateful for those of us that were spared and those that are still with us today”.
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“We held each other and we protected each other through this horrific event”, said county Health Director Trudy Raymundo, who was in the room during the attack, “and we will continue to hold each other and protect each other”.
“The question for us”, Bowdich told reporters Monday, “is how, and by whom, and where”.
Although the president said his administration is constantly examining its counter-terrorism strategy to see if additional steps are needed to protect Americans, his speech included no new policy changes or announcements. It is far more extensive than checks made for traditional tourist visas, Rosenblum said.
Police announced last week that investigators had recovered a dozen pipe-bomb-type devices, bomb-making tools and thousands of rounds of ammunition in the suspects’ home.
Farook’s mother was still being questioned.
The FBI would not release details on where the couple practiced their shooting.
Farook looked into contacting terrorist groups overseas, such as al Qaeda affiliate al Nusra Front and Al-Shabaab, a senior law enforcement official said.
Meanwhile, investigators discovered that two of the killers’ rifles belonged to a friend of Farook’s, Enrique Marquez, so the Federal Bureau of Investigation is now trying to find out how they ended up the hands of the attackers.
The FBI searched Marquez’s home on Saturday. Marquez reportedly checked into a mental health facility after the shootings left him distraught-the L.A. Times reports that Marquez may have been unaware of their plot.
Farook and Malik had been married two years and had a 6-month-old daughter, authorities said.
Malik had moved with her father, an engineer, from Pakistan’s Punjab province to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, when she was a young child, the report said adding that from 2007 to around 2012, Malik studied in Multan where one faculty member recalled her as a “Saudi girl” because her religious observance was so much stricter than that of her peers.
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The mass shooting and its possible connections to Islamic militants quickly found its way into presidential politics, with several candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination accusing Obama of hesitancy in linking Wednesday’s bloodshed in California to global terrorism. Authorities are investigating the case as a terrorist attack.
