Fatal San Bernardino shooting victims identified

Wearing black tactical gear and wielding assault rifles, Syed Rizwan Farook, a 28-year-old county restaurant inspector, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, sprayed as many as 75 rounds into a room at a social service center for the disabled, where Farook’s co-workers had gathered for a holiday banquet.

Mass shootings in CT are relatively rare – there were only three in 2015. Authorities said Malik came to the USA on a Pakistani passport and a fiancee visa in July 2014.

Officials in Washington familiar with the investigation said so far there was no hard evidence of a direct connection between the shooters and any militant group overseas, but the electronics would be checked to see if the couple had been browsing on jihadist websites or social media. The source also said it was possible that one or more of the Farook contacts under scrutiny were located overseas.

Were they terrorists with ties to the Islamic State?

“But this much we know: As a country we clearly aren’t doing enough, and our elected officials’ conversations about solutions usually end in political spin”.

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.

Saudi Arabia Those who knew Farook, an American citizen, expressed surprise at his alleged involvement.

“His degree of faith is very high”, the director, Mustafa Kuko, told Reuters. I didn’t know a better person.

“He loved his job as an Environmental Health Specialist with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health Division of Environmental Health and he considered his colleagues his family”. He’s believed to have attended the gathering and left after a dispute before returning with his wife and opening fire. Keane said it is not uncommon for target shooters to buy larger volumes of ammunition at a time since they can routinely shoot hundreds of rounds during a weekend. Hours later, they died in a shootout with police.

The guns were legally purchased in the United States, said Meredith Davis, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They did not say how the rifles got into the attackers’ hands.

Ayloush urged the public not to jump to conclusions about the motives behind the San Bernardino attack.

Authorities said the attack was carefully planned.

“These folks only want to think and pray – the NRA pays them to only think and pray about gun violence and not to do anything else about it”, Igor Volsky, a blogger with ThinkProgress, told MSNBC. “There’s a lot of Islamophobia out there, a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment, fueled by pundits here and there trying to blame a whole community for the acts of a few”.

Vince Armijo, who identified himself as the church leader at Shiloh Messianic Congregation, which meets weekly in Crestline and Calimesa, near to San Bernardino, told the Journal that Nicholas, who went by Nick with friends, was a member of the church for three years, had renewed his marriage vows with Jennifer six months ago under a chuppah, and “loved Torah”.

When asked if Farook was religious, Ali said, he only responded that he was “punctual in prayer”.

Instead of new gun-specific legislation, McCarthy told reporters Thursday that he favored as a response to the San Bernardino shootings a bill by Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pennsylvania, that would revise mental health treatment, including creating an assistant secretary position in the Department of Health and Human Services to address mental illness. Ali added that Farook’s wife wore the niqab, a scarf that covers most of the face, which was something Farook had mentioned he liked about her.

“The Coroner Division completed their on-scene investigation early this morning and then began the process of making notification to the families of each victim”, according to a press release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office.

“There have been over 350 mass shootings in America this year”, says Durbin (D-IL).