The death toll from a shooting that occurred in the main mosque in San Diego, California, where two teenagers opened fire killing three people, including a security guard, is five dead. The two young people were found dead shortly after inside a car, probably after having committed suicide. The case is being treated by police as a hate crime.
The dynamics
The alarm was raised by the mother of one of the two teenagers who, at 9.42 in the morning, local time, called the police reporting the disappearance of her son and reporting that several weapons had disappeared from their home. The woman adds that the young man has suicidal tendencies and is in the company of another boy. The two are wearing camouflage gear. The police immediately set out to look for the two teenagers.
A patrol is also sent to Madison High School (the school is in the neighborhood of one of the two suspects), but at 11:43 someone calls the station to report the presence of an armed man in the Islamic center of the Clairemont neighborhood, the largest mosque in the city.
Officers arrive on site at 11.47am and find three people dead outside the building. In the same minutes, a few blocks from the Islamic center, a gardener is hit by shots fired from a car. He is only saved thanks to his gardener’s helmet. Shortly afterwards the police found the bodies of the two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, inside a vehicle parked on the street.
BREAKING 🔴
Multiple fatalities and injuries in active shooter situation at the Islamic Center of San Diego in California, BNO News reports. https://t.co/4a4KB9bXj5 pic.twitter.com/jGNchm1w7W
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One of the two apparently left a farewell note at his parents’ home in which phrases claiming racial pride were written, while other writings were found on one of the weapons used by the two alleged attackers. According to the police, these were hate speech phrases that “covered a wide range of topics”, but did not contain specific threats to the Islamic center.
The security guard would have confronted the two teenagers, avoiding further deaths
According to an initial reconstruction, the security guard who died in the shooting would have confronted the two teenagers, avoiding a much larger massacre, but the dynamics of the facts are still very uncertain. The man was the father of eight children. A friend of his, Sam Hamideh, said he “cared deeply about his community and sacrificed his life to protect the people inside the mosque.” “We believe that the security guard managed to at least contain the situation in the area in front of the mosque,” the police chief confirmed, calling his action “heroic”.
After the attack, security measures were tightened in several cities in the US. The police departments of New York City, Washington DC and Los Angeles, reports ‘CNN’, have announced that they have increased the police presence in mosques and other religious places.
“It is shameful to target a place of worship” commented the director of the Islamic center where the shooting occurred, Imam Taha Hassane. “I know it is a time of pain, a time of sadness. We have never experienced a tragedy like this before. And in this moment all I can say is that we are praying and close to all the families in our community.”