Shooter in California massacre was in touch with terror subject | New York Post
Syed Rizwan Farook, who
killed 14 people in San Bernardino during a shooting rampage with his wife, visited Pakistan lat year and was in contact with more than one international terrorism subject whom the FBI was already investigating, sources and officials said on Thursday.
“He was in touch with others here that the FBI was looking at, and he very well could have been radicalized. But I’m not sure how major those other targets are,” the source said.
Other law enforcement sources told CNN that Farook’s apparent radicalization contributed to his motive, but that other things — like workplace grievances — also may have played a role.
He contacted the terrorism subject via social media and over the phone,
CNN reported.
Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia two years ago as part of a hajj pilgrimage, which devout Muslims are required to do at some point in their lives, according to law enforcement sources.
Farook also visited Pakistan last year, according to David Bowdich, the assistant FBI director in charge of the Los Angeles office.
In July 2014, Farook returned to the US from Pakistan with his future wife, Tashfeen Malik, who entered the country on a K-1 or fiancée visa on her Pakistani passport,
The New York Times reported.
Meanwhile, San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said Thursday that Farook and Malik, fired as many as 75 rifle rounds at the scene and left behind an explosive device rigged with three pipe bombs with a remote-control device – though it failed to detonate.
It apparently malfunctioned, Burguan said at the latest press conference.
told USA Today that they were bought in San Diego. Authorities are investigating their unnamed buyer.
Meredith Davis of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives said investigators are working to make a connection to the last legal purchaser. All four guns were bought four years ago.
The rifles involved were powerful enough to pierce the standard protective vest worn by cops, she said.
California requires paperwork when guns change hands privately but many other states don’t, she added.
By all accounts, Farook was leading the “American dream” as the married, US-born son of immigrants, with college degrees, a middle-class job and a newborn daughter.
according to ABC News.
The then-single Farook also noted that he didn’t smoke or drink.
Farook claimed he grew up in Chicago in a “religios [sic] but modern family of 4” and that he enjoyed “doing target practice with younger sister and friends” in his backyard.
Both Farook and Malik were of Pakistani descent.
While colleagues described Farook, who recently sprouted a beard, as deeply religious, he never talked about his faith at work.
“He never struck me as a fanatic, he never struck me as suspicious,” said Griselda Reisinger, who worked alongside the killer before she left the agency in May.
A man named “Syed Rizwan Farook” last went to school in 2013, at nearby Cal State Fullerton. Farook attended for one semester in the graduate program for environmental engineering, but he never attained his graduate degree, school records showed.
“We do not know and cannot confirm whether this is the same individual referenced in today’s news reports,” university spokeswoman Paula Selleck
told the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
The couple’s loved ones can’t understand how they flipped out.
“I am in shock,” Farook’s brother-in-law Farhan Khan told reporters at a hastily called press conference at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in nearby Anaheim. “We all are just completely shocked. We had no idea something like this could happen.”
In another development, it emerged that Farook’s life while living with his parents was troubled.
In 2006 divorce filings, his mother detailed a violent marital history in which her children often had to intervene.
Rafia Farook said her husband of 24 years was physically and verbally abusive and was “negligent and an alcoholic,” according to documents filed in Riverside County Superior Court.
Her husband, she said, forced her and three of her children to move out. They moved into an Irvine residence.
Later, in multiple requests for domestic-violence protection, Rafia Farook detailed the maltreatment she said she encountered and that her kids witnessed: Her husband had once drunkenly dropped a TV on her. Another time, he pushed her toward a car.
After a drunken slumber, he shouted expletives and threw dishes in the kitchen.
“Inside the house he tried to hit me. My daughter came in between to save me,” she said about one incident. Police were not called to the home, she said.
“He is always mad,” she said. “Screaming on me, shouting at my kids for no reason. … My son came in between to save me.”
It was unclear if she was referring to Syed Rizwan Farook, who at the time was 19 and living with her, according to documents.
Meanwhile, 10 shooting victims are being treated at two hospitals.
San Bernardino County spokeswoman Felisa Cardona told The AP that all five patients at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center were in stable condition Thursday morning.
One other patient left the hospital after being treated Wednesday, she said.
Loma Linda University Medical Center is treating five patients — two in critical condition and three in fair condition, CEO Kerry Heinrich said.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department will be offering “any and all assistance necessary” as the investigation continues.
