Five people died Monday in an attack on a San Diego mosque in what authorities are investigating as a hate crime.
The deceased included two suspects, believed to be ages 17 and 19, who police say shot and killed three men outside the Islamic Center of San Diego. The suspects fled and apparently shot themselves to death a few blocks away.
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Authorities said they would consider the attack a hate crime until they found evidence to the contrary. However, they said they had not established a specific motive.
“We got a lot of work to do to try to figure out what led up to this and what happened,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said during a televised news conference.
One of the three men killed at the mosque was a security guard, who Wahl said “played a pivotal role in assisting this from being much worse.”
No information was released on the other two victims.
Details of the attack
The shooting happened just before noon local time. Wahl said the first officers responded about four minutes later and discovered three deceased adults in front of the mosque.
At about the same time, Wahl said, a landscaper working nearby reported that he had been shot at but was not wounded. Within moments, the chief said, officers found a vehicle in the middle of a street with the apparent shooters, both of them dead from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
FBI Director Kash Patel said that the FBI is aware of the shooting and is assisting local authorities.
Within minutes after receiving 911 calls about Monday’s shooting, police placed a K-8 school connected to the mosque under a shelter-in-place order and footage showed some students evacuating the building with police.
“We are safe,” Imam Taha Hassane said in a video posted to Facebook. “The entire school is safe. All the kids, all the staff and teachers are safe.”
“We have never experienced a tragedy like this,” Hassane said later at a press conference with the police chief and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.
“It is extremely outrageous to target a place of worship,” he added. “Our Islamic Center is a place of worship. People come to the Islamic center to pray, to learn. … This is something that we have never expected.”
Gloria said he wanted to reassure San Diego’s Muslim residents that “we will do everything it takes to make sure you can feel safe in this city.”
The shooting comes just over two months after a man rammed his car into a Michigan synagogue, making this the second high-profile attack on a religious institution this year.
Response to the shooting
The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack, calling it a “horrifying act of violence” that no one should have to go through, especially at their place of worship.
“No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school,” the group wrote on X. “We are working to learn more about this incident and we encourage everyone to keep this community in your prayers.”
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