FBI Wants Public Help to Complete Timeline Gap of San Bernardino Attack
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking the help of the public in completing the timeline gap of the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 people last Dec. 2, 2015. Agents are trying to find the unknown whereabouts of the shooters for 18 minutes, just a couple hours after the incident.
A lot of information has been gathered in the last five weeks since the massacre, but investigators still need more details about the gap between 12:59 p.m. and 1:17 p.m. Los Angeles FBI Chief David Bowdich told the media on Tuesday that they are hoping to find out if the suspects made contact with anyone or stopped somewhere in the 18-minute span, per the Associated Press.
"It's possible that they stopped, whether it be a storage area, a residence, a business. It's possible there was a contact made. We just don't know. It very well may not be an important fact, but until we close that gap we just don't know for sure," Bowdich said.
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. Bowdich added that the bureau has already issued 29 search warrants, carried out 550 interviews and searched all over social media to piece together a timeline of the shooting.
According to USA Today, the chief also said that there is still no concrete evidence that the attack has been instructed from overseas, but nothing has been ruled out until they finish the investigation. However, they believe that the suspects, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, were inspired by radical terrorist ideology.
Farook, 28, was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and worked as a restaurant inspector for San Bernardino County Department of Public Health while his wife came to the U.S. from Pakistan last July 2014 to get married to him. Authorities know that the couple is radicalized Muslims but never drew their attention before the attack at the Inland Regional Center.
The FBI's timeline starts at 8:37 a.m. when Farook left his home and arrived 10 minutes later to a meeting with his work colleagues that turned afterwards to be a holiday party. He left at 10:37 a.m. to return to his wife and attacked his colleagues 19 minutes later.
The couple's friend, Enrique Marquez Jr., was arrested and accused of providing the assault rifles used in the shooting. 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.
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