ABOVE PHOTO: A victim is wheeled away on a stretcher following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services facility, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, Calif. (David Bauman/The Press-Enterprise via AP)
By Amanda Lee Myers and Justin Pritchard
Associated Press
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — The two attackers who killed 14 people in a rampage at a banquet fired as many as 75 rifle rounds at the scene, left behind three rigged-together pipe bombs with a remote-control device that apparently malfunctioned, and had over 1,600 more bullets with them when they were gunned down in their SUV, authorities said Thursday.
At their home, they had 12 pipe bombs, tools for making more such explosives, and more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said in a grim morning-after inventory that suggested Wednesday’s bloodbath could have been far bloodier.
Syed Rizwan Farook, a 28-year-old county restaurant inspector, and his wife or fiancee, Tashfeen Malik, 27, slaughtered 14 people and seriously wounded more than a dozen others in the attack at a social service center for the disabled after he slipped away from an employee banquet he was attending there. The couple were gunned down about hours later and a few miles away in a furious shootout with police.
As the FBI took over the investigation, authorities Thursday were trying to learn why the couple left behind their 6-month-old daughter and went on the rampage – the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since the Newtown, Connecticut, school tragedy three years ago that left 26 children and adults dead.
At the White House, President Barack Obama said after meeting with his national security team that it was “possible this was terrorist-related” but that authorities were unsure. He raised the possibility that it was a workplace dispute or that mixed motives were at play.
Law enforcement experts said investigators may well conclude the killers had more than one motivation.
Farook was born in the U.S. to a Pakistani family, was raised in Southern California and had been a San Bernardino County employee for five years, according to authorities and acquaintances. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said he had no information on Malik’s background. Relatives said Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet his wife.
Police and federal agents for a second day searched a home in neighboring Redlands, about 7 miles from the massacre at the Inland Regional Center. Investigators didn’t immediately say if the couple had lived there. Public records show it may be the home of a Farook family member.
Residents told KABC-TV Redlands is a sleepy town and expressed shock that the killers might be their neighbors.
The attackers invaded the center about 60 miles east of Los Angeles around 11 a.m., opening fire in a conference area county health officials had rented for an employee banquet. Farook attended the banquet, then left and returned with murderous intent.
“They came prepared to do what they did, as if they were on a mission,” Burguan said.
Co-worker Patrick Baccari said he was sitting at the same table as Farook, who suddenly disappeared. Baccari said that when the shooting started, he took refuge in a bathroom and suffered minor wounds from shrapnel slicing through the wall.
The shooting lasted about five minutes, he said, and when he looked in the mirror he realized he was bleeding.
“If I hadn’t been in the bathroom, I’d probably be laying dead on the floor,” he said.
Baccari described Farook as reserved and said he showed no signs of unusual behavior. Earlier this year, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, was gone for about a month and returned with a wife, later growing a beard, Baccari said.
The couple dropped off their daughter with relatives Wednesday morning, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said after talking with family.
“We don’t know the motives. Is it work, rage-related? Is it mental illness? Is it extreme ideology? At this point, it’s really unknown to us, and at this point it’s too soon to speculate,” Ayloush said.
Co-workers told the Los Angeles Times that Farook was a devout Muslim but didn’t talk about religion at work.
Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, told reporters that he last spoke to his brother-in-law about a week ago. Khan condemned the violence and said he had “absolutely no idea” why Farook would kill.
Seventeen people were wounded, according to authorities. As of Thursday morning, two patients were listed in critical condition.
About four hours after the late-morning carnage, police hunting for the killers riddled a black SUV with gunfire in a shootout 2 miles from the social services center in this Southern California city of 214,000 people.
Farook and Malik were found with assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns, and were wearing “assault-style clothing” with ammunition attached, authorities said.
Three explosive devices – all connected to one another – were found at the social services center, police said.
Federal authorities said the two assault rifles and two handguns used in the violence had been bought legally, but they did not say how and when they got into the attackers’ hands.
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