FBI seeks to fill timeline gap in San Bernardino attack

Bowdich said the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to know if they stopped at any businesses, contacted anyone, or dropped anything off during that time, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In particular, investigators are struggling to figure out where Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were for 18 minutes during the early afternoon after they shot 14 people to death at the Inland Regional Center and fled in an SUV.

“We have scrubbed a number of social media”, Bowdich said. During that time, authorities say, the shooters zig-zagged across a patch of territory from Redlands to San Bernardino, parking and stopping at different places.

He urged people to call if they have any information, whether it’s photographic or other electronic evidence, that will tell the exact locations of the suspects during the timeline gap.

He said it was possible that the couple may have stopped at a storage facility or had contact with someone during those 18 minutes. From 12:59 p.m.to 1:17 p.m., the whereabouts of Farook and Malik were unknown.

“It may not be an important fact, but until we close that gap we don’t know”.

Bowdich said agents have accounted for 3 hours and 42 minutes of their time the day of the attack. Prosecutors said that Marquez became interested in radical ideology after meeting Farook in 2005, and by 2011, he supported dead al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlak’s ideas. At this time the route seems to have no “rhyme or reason” that can be made out by investigators, and there has not been evidence suggesting a secondary target, although could be a real possibility, Bowrich said. That’s after executing 29 search warrants and conducting more than 550 interviews, law enforcement officials say. About 19 minutes later, Farook returned to the center with his wife and the attack ensued over the next few minutes.

A grand jury last month indicted Marquez, who grew up next door to Farook, on charges that include making false statements about when he bought the weapons and conspiring with Farook on a pair of previously planned attacks that were never carried out.

The request for assistance comes a day before a friend of Farook’s accused of providing the guns used in the massacre is scheduled to be arraigned in a federal court in nearby Riverside.