AP/PTI
SAN BERNARDINO, DECEMBER 3
A man and a woman suspected of taking part in a shooting that killed 14 people and wounded 17 at a Southern California social services agency on Wednesday died in a shootout with police hours later, authorities said.
A Muslim advocacy group said one of the suspects was Syed Farook, and introduced a man as Farook’s brother-in-law, who said he had no idea what might have motivated the attack. He said his relative was a U.S. citizen.
Officials have yet to publicly identify any suspects.
The suspects fled the scene of the shooting in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles, and two people died a few hours later in a shootout when police confronted them in their getaway vehicle. One police officer was injured. The shooting rampage at a holiday party on the campus of an agency that serves the developmentally disabled marked the deadliest U.S. gun violence since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, in which 27 people, including the gunman, were killed. At a news conference called by the Los Angeles area chapter of the Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a man who identified himself as Farhan Khan said his sister was married to one of the suspects and he offered his condolences to the victims.
“Why would he do that? Why would he do something like this? I have absolutely no idea, I am in shock myself,” Khan said at a news conference in Anaheim, California, south of Los Angeles. Farook and his wife have been missing since Wednesday morning, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR in the Los Angeles area. A person by the name of Syed Farook was listed on county documents as an employee of the San Bernardino County Environmental Health Department. Staff members from that department had gathered on Wednesday for the party where the shooters opened fire. The massacre differed from most other recent U.S. killing sprees in key ways, including the involvement of multiple people rather than a lone perpetrator. It also comes less than three weeks after the deadly attacks in Paris prompted tighter security at many public venues across the United States.
Authorities said they also detained an individual seen running away from the vehicle, but investigators were not immediately sure that person was involved in the case, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said at a news conference. Burguan said the two suspects who were killed were armed with assault rifles and handguns and were dressed in “assault-style” clothing. The police chief said he knew of no possible motive for the attack.
David Bowdich, an assistant regional FBI director, said authorities had not yet ruled out whether the shooting was an act of terrorism. “It is a possibility, but we don’t know that,” he told reporters. “It’s possible it goes down that road. It’s possible it does not.” Burguan said earlier, “Obviously, at a minimum, we have a domestic-type, terrorist-type situation that occurred here.” The attack took place on the campus of the Inland Regional Center, in a building housing a conference center that was being used for the holiday celebration, authorities said.
President Barack Obama has condemned the California shooting that killed 14 people and injured 17, saying that the pattern of mass shootings in the US has no parallel anywhere in the world and reiterated his call for more gun control reforms.
“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,” Obama told the CBS news in an interview shortly after the attack.
Two of the gunmen were shot dead by the police in a chase hours later, while another one was apprehended.
In the past few years the US has been experiencing a series of tragic mass shooting, the frequency of which has increased.
Obama said the current law which lets anyone buy gun off the shelf without any background check needs to change. The Republican controlled Congress has refused to change the law.
“We should never think this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events because it doesn’t happen with the same frequency in other countries,” he said.
He reiterated his call to the lawmakers to come together “on a bipartisan basis” to make Americans safer.
“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,” he said.
That includes “common sense gun safety laws” and “stronger background checks,” as well as making use of the no-fly list, Obama said.
“For those who are concerned about terrorism, some may be aware of the fact that we have a no-fly list where people can’t get on planes, but those same people who we don’t allow to fly could go into a store right now in the US and buy a firearm, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. That’s a law that needs to be changed,” said the US President.
