San Bernadino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook’s motive for killing 14 of his coworkers in November 2015 apparently stemmed from his anger at having to attend a mandatory office Christmas party.
“She had essentially made the statement in an online account that she didn’t think that a Muslim should have to participate in a non-Muslim holiday or event,” San Bernadino’s police chief, describing Farook’s wife and co-terrorist Tashfeen Malik, told ABCNews. “That really is one of the very, very few pieces of potential evidence that we have that we can truly point to and say, ‘That probably is a motive in this case.”
Farook reportedly went to the office in the early morning for the party before promptly leaving. He returned 20 minutes later in a rental car with his wife, several automatic rifles, and pipe bombs. As the attack on Farook’s coworkers began, Malik declared her allegiance on Facebook to Islamic State.
After gunning down 14 of their coworkers, Farook and Malik circled the city for nearly four hours. Eventually they were spotted by local law enforcement, who shot them both dead after they tried to engage police in a gun battle.
Farook and Malik reportedly met on an online forum when Malik lived in Saudi Arabia. Farook visited Malik in Saudi Arabia and brought her to the U.S. on a fiance visa before marrying her later that year. The couple had a 6-month-old child they dropped off with Farook’s mother shortly before carrying out the attack.
“It certainly surprised me that you’d have a woman with a 6-month-old baby who’d do something like this,” an FBI counter-terrorism official echoed to ABCNews. He continued, “That’s very hard for us to comprehend.”
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