{"id":14559,"date":"2015-12-08T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/fbi-killers-radicalized-for-some-time\/"},"modified":"2015-12-08T09:00:34","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T17:00:34","slug":"fbi-killers-radicalized-for-some-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/fbi-killers-radicalized-for-some-time\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI: Killers radicalized ‘for some time’"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. <\/strong>\u2014 The San Bernardino killers had been radicalized \u201cfor quite some time\u201d and had taken target practice at area gun ranges, in one instance just days before the attack that left 14 people dead, the FBI said Monday.<\/p>\n

In a chilling twist, authorities also disclosed that a year before the rampage, Syed Farook\u2019s co-workers at the county health department underwent \u201cactive shooter\u201d training in the very conference room where he and his wife opened fire on them last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear whether Farook attended the late-2014 instructional session on how to react to a workplace gunman, San Bernardino County spokeswoman Felisa Cardona said.<\/p>\n

On Monday, two employees who had been in the room during the attack on a holiday luncheon said colleagues tried to do just as they had been trained \u2014 drop under the tables and stay quiet so as not to attract attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, the room just didn\u2019t provide a whole lot of protection,\u201d said Corwin Porter, assistant county health director.<\/p>\n

Farook, a 28-year-old restaurant inspector who was born in the U.S. to a Pakistani family, and Tashfeen Malik, a 29-year-old immigrant from Pakistan, went on the rampage at about the same time Malik pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group on Facebook, authorities said. The Muslim couple were killed hours later in a gunbattle with police.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have learned and believe that both subjects were radicalized and have been for quite some time,\u201d said David Bowdich, chief of the FBI\u2019s Los Angeles office.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe question we\u2019re trying to get at is how did that happen and by whom and where did that happen? And I will tell you right now we don\u2019t know those answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said the couple had taken target practice at ranges in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with one session held within days of the rampage.<\/p>\n

In addition, authorities discovered 19 pipes in the couple\u2019s home in Redlands, California, that could be turned into bombs, Bowdich said. The FBI previously said it had found 12 pipe bombs.<\/p>\n

Newly released emergency radio transmissions from the fast-moving tragedy show that police identified Farook as a suspect almost immediately, even though witnesses reported that the attackers wore black ski masks.<\/p>\n

An unidentified police officer put out Farook\u2019s name because Farook had left the luncheon \u201cout of the blue\u201d 20 minutes before the shooting, \u201cseemed nervous,\u201d and matched the description of one of the attackers, according to audio recordings posted by The Press-Enterprise newspaper of Riverside.<\/p>\n

In addition to the 14 killed, 21 people were hurt. At least six remained hospitalized, two in critical condition.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama said in a prime-time address Sunday night that the attack was an \u201cact of terrorism designed to kill innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The killers had \u201cgone down the dark path of radicalization,\u201d he said, but there was no evidence they were part of a larger conspiracy or were directed by an overseas terror organization.<\/p>\n

The two assault rifles used in the attack had been legally purchased by an old friend of Farook\u2019s, Enrique Marquez, authorities said, but they are still trying to determine how the couple got the weapons.<\/p>\n

Marquez has not been charged with a crime.<\/p>\n

The FBI would not release details on where the husband-and-wife killers practiced their shooting.<\/p>\n

But John Galletta, an instructor at Riverside Magnum Range, said in a statement that Farook had been there on Nov. 29 and 30, two days before the attack, and \u201cnothing was out of the ordinary regarding his behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galletta told reporters that he never spoke to Farook and that no one had seen Farook\u2019s wife around there.<\/p>\n

Asked whether in hindsight he or others in the shop should have been suspicious of Farook, Galletta said: \u201cHow are you able to determine what somebody\u2019s intents are?\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, most of the county\u2019s 20,000 employees went back to work for the first time since the rampage five days earlier plunged the community into shock and mourning.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo honor them, to express our gratitude for their unimaginable sacrifice, we have to fight to maintain that ordinary,\u201d County Supervisor Janice Rutherford said of the victims. \u201cWe can\u2019t be afraid of our lives, of our community, of our neighbors, of our co-workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities tightened security at county buildings and offered counseling and a hotline for employees in distress.<\/p>\n

Employees in the environmental health division, where Farook and many of his victims worked, will be off until next week. It was the environmental health division that held the active-shooter training last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe held each other and we protected each other through this horrific event,\u201d said county Health Director Trudy Raymundo, who was in the room during the attack, \u201cand we will continue to hold each other and protect each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Porter, her colleague, said neither shooter spoke before firing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe weren\u2019t quite sure if it was an exercise the staff were throwing that they forgot to tell us about,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we all reacted instinctively and went under our tables.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same news conference where the return to work was announced were some of the doctors who rushed to treat the victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat really bothers me most,\u201d said Dr. Dev GnanaDev, chief of surgery at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, \u201cis that none of the 14 who perished had a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Contributing to this report were John Antczak, Sue Manning and Christine Armario in Los Angeles; and Brian Skoloff in Riverside, California.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been corrected to show the full wording of Bowdich\u2019s quote about the couple\u2019s radicalization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. \u2014 The San Bernardino killers had been radicalized \u201cfor quite some time\u201d and had taken target practice at area gun ranges, in one instance just days before the attack that left 14 people dead, the FBI said Monday. In a chilling twist, authorities also disclosed that a year before the rampage, Syed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":14560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14559"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}