Revealed: What YouTube shooter did hours before attack
Police in California say the woman who targeted YouTube's headquarters in Wednesday's shooting had visited a gun range to practice just hours before the attack.
Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39, shot three people before turning the gun on herself just after midday (local time).
All three were taken to hospital with two women, 32 and 27, since released from hospital while one man, 36, remains in a serious condition.
San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini says Aghdam was angry with the video streaming giant because they supposedly censored her channel.
He said she had visited a gun range before she drove to the company’s headquarters near San Francisco, adding that she gained access to the building through a parking garage.
He confirmed she legally owned the semi-automatic handgun used in the attack.
Barberini said Wednesday that investigators are in the process of executing search warrants at two properties.
She 'hated' the company, father warned police
Aghdam's father says she was angry at the company because it stopped paying her for videos she posted on the platform.
Ismail Aghdam told the Bay Area News Group that he warned police his daughter might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company.
Ismail said he reported his daughter missing on Monday after she did not answer her phone for two days.
He said the family received a call from Mountain View police around 2am on Tuesday (local time) telling him they found Aghdam sleeping in a car and he warned them she might go to YouTube.
Mountain View Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson confirmed officers located a woman by the same name asleep in a vehicle asleep in a Mountain View parking lot Tuesday morning.
On her website, nasimesabz.com, Aghdam 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.
Nelson did not respond to a question about whether police were warned Aghdam might go to YouTube.
Shooter was 'Persian, vegan bodybuilder'
A law enforcement official said investigators believe Aghdam used the name Nasime Sabz online and had a long-running dispute with YouTube.
Aghdam described herself a Persian, vegan bodybuilder and anti-animal cruelty campaigner. She had 5000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and posted videos railing against animal cruelty and unhealthy living.
She was quoted in a 2009 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune about a protest by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against the use of pigs in military trauma training.
She dressed in a wig and jeans with drops of painted “blood” on them, holding a plastic sword at the demonstration outside the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base.
“For me, animal rights equal human rights,” Aghdam told the Union-Tribune at the time.
Victims 'not targeted', employees hid for their lives
Police say the three people who were shot during the attack were not specifically targeted.
San Bruno police said in a statement that Aghdam did not know the victims when she opened fire before she killed herself.
Terrified employees huddled inside, calling emergency services, 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,” Arnspiger said.
She and others hid in a conference room for an hour while another employee repeatedly called police for updates.
“It was terrifying,” she said.
Zach Vorhies, 37, a senior software engineer at YouTube, 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. Vorhies said he realized 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 wasn’t helping, he told the San Jose Mercury News.
“Everyone was figuring out what to do,” Finney said. “I was trying to stay calm and see what I could do. Everybody is shocked.”
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, Police Chief Barberini said.
Police say Aghdam wounded three people by shooting them before fatally shooting herself. A fourth person injured their ankle while fleeing.
With AP
