14 killed in California shooting, two suspects dead

A heavily armed man and woman in their 20s
died in a shootout with police after killing 14
people at a Christmas party in California in
America’s worst mass shooting in three years,
authorities said.
Police identified the pair as Syed Farook, a 28-
year-old US citizen who worked for the local
county, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, whose
nationality was unknown. They said the suspects
were either married or engaged.
Jarrod Burguan, San Bernardino’s police chief,
confirmed that both were dead, and that police
no longer believed a third suspect mentioned
earlier was at large.
The shooters targeted a year-end party taking
place at a social services center in San
Bernardino, about an hour’s drive east of Los
Angeles, killing 14 people and wounding 17 more.
“We don’t have the motive at this point,” the
police chief said. “We have not ruled out
terrorism.”
The massacre drew an angry response from
President Barack Obama, who once again urged
Congress to pass tougher gun control measures to
stem America’s epidemic of gun violence.
According to Burguan, Farook was an
environmental inspector who had worked for the
county health department for five years.
He and Malik were dressed in military-style gear
and carried assault weapons as they burst into
the auditorium where the bloodbath took place.
The hall was let out for the holiday party by the
Inland Regional Center for the disabled.
Burguan said Farook had attended the Christmas
party organized by the health department and
left after an apparent dispute, only to return a
short time later with Malik, armed with assault
rifles and semiautomatic handguns.
“Based upon how they were equipped, there had
to be some degree of planning that went into
this,” he said. “I don’t think they just ran home
and put on these tactical clothes, grabbed guns
and came back on a spur of the moment thing.”
– ‘Twisted mindset’ –
He said the attackers left explosive devices
behind and authorities were only able to access
the scene of the crime several hours after the
shooting.
There was no immediate information on the
identity of the victims.
FBI agents in the early evening raided an
apartment in the nearby town of Redlands,
where the two suspects were seen before the
police chase that ended in a shootout a few miles
from the Inland Center.
The California chapter of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the
killings. Farook’s brother-in-law, Farhan Khan,
said he had no clue what prompted the carnage.
“I am in shock that something like this could
happen,” a visibly shaken Khan told a press
conference organized by CAIR.
The Los Angeles Times quoted some of Farook’s
co-workers as saying he had previously traveled
to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife.
The couple had a six-month-old daughter and
appeared to be “living the American dream,”
Patrick Baccari, a fellow inspector who shared a
cubicle with Farook, told the paper.
Hussam Ayloush, CAIR’s executive director in Los
Angeles, said: “The Muslim community stands
shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans
in repudiating any twisted mindset that would
claim to justify such sickening acts of violence.”
– Deadliest since Sandy Hook –
It was the country’s deadliest shooting since
December 14, 2012, when a young man killed 26
people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook
elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Witnesses at the California scene recounted
barricading themselves in offices and hiding as
the sound of gunfire erupted.
Mark Stutte said his daughter was attending the
party organized by the county’s public health
department and called him terrified while hiding
in a restroom as gunshots rang out in the
background.
“It was really, really super scary,” he told local
TV, as he wept. “I’m far away. I couldn’t do
anything for her.”
Lavinia Johnson, the center’s executive director,
said she and her staff hid in another building on
the property for about two hours until they were
evacuated by police.
The local San Bernardino newspaper The Sun
identified one of the victims as Jennifer Stevens
who underwent surgery for a gunshot wound to
the abdomen and was expected to recover.
It said Stevens, 22, had texted her mother right
after the shooting saying: “Mom, I’m at work,
I’ve been shot.”
– ‘Pattern of mass shootings’ –
Obama, who just last week made a plea for action
on gun control after three people were killed at a
family planning center in Colorado, voiced his
anger once more.
“The one thing we do know is that we have a
pattern now of mass shootings in this country
that has no parallel anywhere else in the world,”
he told CBS News.
“There are some steps we could take, not to
eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but
to improve the odds that they don’t happen as
frequently.”
Wednesday’s shooting, which came less than a
week after a gunman killed three people at a
family planning center in Colorado, was certain
to further stoke the bitter debate about gun
control in the United States.
In October, a gunman killed nine people at a
community college in Oregon before turning the
gun on himself.
According to the site Mass Shooting Tracker, the
latest attack brings to 352 the number of mass
shootings in the United States so far this year. A
mass shooting is defined as four or more people
shot in one incident.