Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday that investigators are working through intermediaries in the Middle East and scouring the U.S.to learn what prompted Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik to target a San Bernardino County holiday party packed with Farook’s co-workers in a rampage that left 14 dead and 21 others wounded.
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(CNN)Three U.S. officials familiar with the San Bernardino, California, massacre have told CNN that the woman involved in the shooting authored – as the incident was occurring – a Facebook post declaring her loyalty to the leader of ISIS. Farook, who was seeking a wife on the Internet, connected with Malik almost two years ago before he brought her to California from Saudi Arabia last year as his wife, authorities have said.
San Bernardino Police told CBS News the shooting took place at the Inland Regional Center. One of the key pieces of evidence is the Facebook post in which she pledged allegiance to ISIS right as the couple were carrying out the attack.
Farook family attorneys have described her as “just as a housewife” who was soft-spoken and little known, even to the family and the mother-in-law who lived with her. Following religious tradition in their home, men and women would remain separated during social visits.
As the FBI investigates the attack as an act of terrorism possibly inspired by ISIS, the agency is now working to determine if the man, a former neighbor of one of the attackers – Syed Rizwan Farook – had any knowledge of the plot, The Washington Post reports.
Another official said there’s still no evidence that the couple was in direct contact with any terror groups or individuals overseas leading up to the attack.
Meanwhile, investigators were looking into what led Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook to attack the gathering of Farook’s co-workers on Wednesday.
Back in Malik’s former neighborhood in Karor Lal Esan, Pakistan, Jamil said, “We don’t want Muslims to do such things”.
However, authorities would not rule out terrorism as a motive.
They were each armed with a hand gun and a long gun and wore tactical-style clothing that was “loaded with magazines for a gunfight”, said Meredith Davis, a spokesperson with ATF, according to the Associated Press.
McCaul said it was unclear what ties the couple had with the Islamic State, which has said the pair were “followers”.
If the December 2 mass shooting proves to have been the work of people inspired by Islamist militants, it would be the deadliest such attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.
US authorities are treating last Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino as an “act of terrorism”.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that they had no information about the couple before the killing other than a routine request by Farook to grant Malik a visa so she could join him in the United States so they could marry.
“They just started shooting… they didn’t yell or say anything beforehand”, her husband told NBC News.
The Farook family attorneys, David Chesley and Mohammad Abuershaid, said none of his relatives had any indication either Farook or his wife held extremist views.
Malik moved from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia with her father when she was a toddler, then returned to Pakistan to study pharmacy at a university in Multan from 2007 to 2012.
Islamic State also claimed responsibility for a November 13 series of attacks in Paris in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.
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Malik, 29, was born in Pakistan, and her father lived in Saudi Arabia for many years.
