Pictured: Suspected shooter who was 'angry' at YouTube
The woman who opened fire with a handgun in a courtyard at YouTube headquarters in California has been identified as Nasim Aghdam.
Aghdam wounded three people before fatally shooting herself in the incident, which is being investigated as a domestic dispute, authorities said.
Terrified employees huddled inside calling 911 as officers and federal agents swarmed the company’s suburban campus sandwiched between two interstate freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno.
YouTube employee Dianna Arnspiger said she was on the building’s second floor when she heard gunshots, ran to a window and saw the shooter on a patio outside.
She said the woman wore glasses and a scarf and was using a “big, huge pistol”.
“It was a woman and she was firing her gun. And I just said, ‘shooter’, and everybody started running,” Ms Arnspiger said.
She and others hid in a conference room for an hour while another employee repeatedly called 911 for updates.
“It was terrifying,” she said.
Two law enforcement officials identified the suspect later on Tuesday as Aghdam, of Southern California, and said the shooting was being investigated as a domestic dispute. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the case.
Aghdam had multiple YouTube accounts, Facebook pages and Instagram accounts - all of which have been removed since the shooting.
Police are yet to confirm a motive for the attack. But they're looking into her recent complaints directed at YouTube about having her content censored.
Her father Ismail Aghdam said in a telephone interview that she was "angry" at YouTube because it had "stopped everything".
On her website, nasimesabz.com, she claimed YouTube was filtering her channels to limit her number of views.
"There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!" Aghdam posted.
She was also dissatisfied with the amount of revenue the company was paying her, with one post showing she made $0.10 from a video with 300,000 views.
Police were nor able to give out much information about the victims.
A 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman was in fair condition, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital said.
Witnesses described terror before officers arrived and discovered a victim near a front door and then found the shooter several minutes later with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said.
He said two additional gunshot victims were found at an adjacent business minutes later.
Chief Barberini initially said there were four people who had been shot but later clarified that a fourth person had suffered an ankle injury.
YouTube senior software engineer Zach Vorhies, 37, said he was at his desk working on the second floor of one of the buildings when the fire alarm went off.
He got on his skateboard and approached a courtyard where he saw the shooter yelling, “‘Come at me, or come get me.’”
He saw somebody lying nearby on his back with a red stain on his stomach that appeared to be from a bullet wound.
Mr Vorhies said he realised there was an active shooter when a police officer with an assault rifle came through a security door.
He said the public can access the courtyard where he saw the shooter during work hours.
Michael Finney, a 21-year-old supervisor at Carl’s Jr. across from the campus, said he came out of the bathroom to see a woman in a booth bleeding from the calf.
Two friends were trying to stop the bleeding, using the victim’s sweatshirt as a tourniquet, but it was not helping, he told the San Jose Mercury News.
“Everyone was figuring out what to do,” Mr Finney said.
“I was trying to stay calm and see what I could do. Everybody is shocked.”
Google, which owns the world’s biggest online video website, said the company’s security team worked with authorities to evacuate buildings, and was doing whatever it could support the victims and their families.
YouTube’s headquarters has more than 1000 engineers and other employees in several buildings.
Originally built in the late 1990s for clothing retailer Gap, the campus south of San Francisco is known for its sloped green roof of native grasses.
Inside Google famously outfitted the office several years ago with a three-lane red slide for workers to zoom from one storey to another.
“Today it feels like the entire community of YouTube, all of the employees, were victims of this crime,” Chris Dale, a YouTube spokesman, said.
“Our hearts go out to all those who suffered.”
The White House said President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and that officials were monitoring developments.
