5 dead, including teen gunmen, at San Diego Islamic Center; hate motive probed

Police interview a woman near the Islamic Center of San Diego after multiple people were killed, including an armed security guard.
(Sandy Huffaker / For The Times)

SAN DIEGO — Three people were killed when two suspects opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday morning in an attack that sparked widespread shock and condemnation.

Police swarmed the center after receiving calls of an active shooter and found a crime scene that expanded across several blocks in the area.

According to police, officers arrived within four minutes of the first report. Authorities said two males, 17 and 19 years old, arrived at the center and opened fire.

When officers arrived around 11:45 a.m., they found three adults dead in front of the center, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said. One of those was the center’s security guard, whose actions saved lives, Wahl said.

As officers searched the center, going door to door looking for a gunman, police received additional calls about gunfire several blocks away.

About a half-mile south of the center, a landscaper reported being shot at, though he wasn’t hit. Down another street, officers eventually found the two suspects dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, Wahl said.

Now, police are trying to determine what led up to the shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime.

A law enforcement source not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation told The Times that investigators found anti-Islamic writings inside the vehicle where the gunmen’s bodies were found.

The official also said investigators have located a suicide note linked to one of the suspects that refers to racial pride, and hate speech was also found inside the vehicle.

One of the suspects was believed to have used a firearm from their parent’s home, the official said.

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A still from a video shows a person receiving CPR near the San Diego mosque shooting site.Reddit/@The_Clmt_kid420

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A still from a video shows a person receiving CPR near the San Diego mosque shooting site.Reddit/@The_Clmt_kid420

The shooting left the community of Clairemont north of downtown San Diego reeling.

“We have never experienced tragedy like this before,” said Taha Hassane, imam of the mosque. “It is extremely outrageous to target a place of worship … People come to the Islamic Center to pray, to celebrate, to learn.”

The shooting occurred while a school that operates at the center and mosque was in session. The lower-grade classrooms of the K-12 facility are on site at the center, while grades 4 through 12 operate at a separate campus. It is the only accredited Islamic school in San Diego, according to the school’s website. No children were injured in the incident, said Ahmed Shabaik, chairman for the Islamic Center of San Diego, in a brief interview.

Tazheen Nizam, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in San Diego, said children and teachers with the school were removed by police and taken to a nearby church.

“This is obviously very alarming,” said Deana Helmy, the chair of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “This is a house of worship. There’s a school with children there who are trying to learn, and to go through this is very, very unfortunate.”

Helmy said the shooting comes at the start of the 12th month of the lunar Muslim calendar, Dhu al-Hijjah, during which many Muslims go on their Hajj pilgrimage and celebrate Eid al-Adha.
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Clark attending Madison High School and was on the school’s wrestling team.Facebook/madison.warhawk.wrestling

“Having to start the month this way is a little nerve-racking and there is fear,” Helmy said.

Dozens of families waited on the corner of Hathaway and Petit streets for their children to be released from the school at the mosque and two other schools in the area Monday afternoon.

Mothers and fathers clutched their elementary-aged children’s hands, kissed their cheeks and tried their best to answer questions about what had unfolded at the mosque — looks of worry and overwhelming sadness etched on their faces.

Children asked one another if they had heard gunshots.

Tamer Bar, 39, was waiting to pick up his 7-year-old nephew, who attends school on the second story of the mosque. He’d gone to school late that day and had wanted to stay home. But his mother told him he had to go.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not going to forgive myself if something happened to him,” Bar recalled his sister telling him.

Bar has been praying at the mosque at least two times a day since he arrived in the United States from Gaza in 2006.

He was thankful the shooting hadn’t happened an hour later when the mosque would have been filled with roughly 300 people participating in the Dhuhr prayer. Instead, when the shots rang out there were only a few inside and the school children upstairs, he said.

“It’s a place of peace,” he said of the mosque. “When we pray at the mosque we leave everything behind and we go to face God. As Muslims, we don’t hate. We’re here for peace, which is why we came to the United States.”

The security guard who was killed is named Amin. He’d worked at the mosque for decades and would always greet people by saying “As-salamu alaykum,” Bar said, which translates to “peace be upon you.”

Mark Remily, special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in San Diego, said the agency was assisting in the investigation.

“We are actively investigating the things that led up this,” Wahl said. “Obviously, typically, things like this don’t happen on a whim.”

Hussam Ayloush, head of the California chapter of civil rights group the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that once there are more details available on the motives of the shooting, community leaders will know better how to proceed.

“Everything is so unknown,” Ayloush said. “After we learn a motive, we can determine, was there a security breach, was it hate-motivated? Obviously, these things [shootings] are very random, but at this time nobody knows yet.”

In the meantime, he said his organization is reaching out to mosques across California to ensure they have security protocols in place.

“We want to communicate without creating unnecessary panic, because at the end of the day we have to live our lives and come to the mosque freely and take our kids to school.”

Teenage gunman left behind note, police say

One of the teenagers who opened fire at the mosque on Monday left behind a note, Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference/

‘What that note looks like, what that note says, I’m not going to disclose right now,’ he said.

But Wahl also said police are probing anti-Islamic writings that were found inside the vehicle where he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound along with the other suspected gunman.

The police chief noted that officers interviewed the boy’s mother earlier in the day, after she reported that her son ran away with her weapons and believed that ‘there was a bigger threat picture here that we needed to consider.’

One of the two teenage gunmen who opened fire at a San Diego mosque left behind a note, authorities said.

It is unclear what the note may have said, but Police Chief Scott Wahl said police are now probing anti-Islamic writings that Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, allegedly left behind when they were found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

The two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego just before noon on Monday, killing three people, including security guard Amin Abdullah, a father of eight.

He was described as a ‘hero’ for apparently springing into action to help protect others at the mosque.

The shooting prompted the evacuation of children from the Clairemont mosque, the largest in San Diego County.

It also serves as the home to the Al Rashid School, formerly known as the Islamic School of San Diego.

Hernandez, Hussain and Winton reported from Los Angeles, Fry from San Diego.