San Bernardino shooting: At least 14 people killed

Radio news just reported it seems to have had something to do with a disagreement at a holiday office party. Hard to know at this point eh.

What we know
Around 11 a.m., two assailants opened fire in San Bernardino at a party in the Inland Regional Center, police said.
Fourteen people were killed and 17 wounded. The motive is unknown.
Police said there was "some degree of planning." The shooters were heavily armed and had tactical attire.
After an afternoon car chase, two armed suspects were killed by police: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik.

Authorities have only recently begun to process the scene at the Inland Regional Center after three devices, which police believe were explosives, were destroyed, said San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.

The chief said investigators are not sure what the devices were made out of, but that they are "leaning a little bit more toward a pipe bomb type design."

Bomb squad officers disposed of a total of three devices a couple hours ago, Burguan said in a news conference late Wednesday.

"We believe that those were explosive devices," Burguan said.

A law enforcement source told Fox News that the couple were carrying AR-15 rifles and pistols when they were shot and killed by police after a brief chase in their black SUV Wednesday afternoon. The source said the vehicle also contained so-called "rollout bags" with multiple pipe bombs. The couple also had GoPro cameras strapped to their body armor and wore tactical clothing, including vests stuffed with ammunition magazines.

Witnesses said the suspects were wearing body armor and masks and moved with grim precision. Gunfire sent people scrambling to hide under desks, barricade themselves in room or flee for their lives.

Baccari and Christian Nwadike said Farook, who worked with them for several years, rarely started a conversation. But the tall, thin young man with a full beard was well liked and spent much of his time out in the field.

They and other colleagues said Farook was a devout Muslim, but rarely discussed religion at work.

"He never struck me as a fanatic, he never struck me as suspicious," said Griselda Reisinger, who worked with Farook before leaving the agency in May.

They said Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online. The couple had a baby and appeared to be "living the American dream," said Patrick Baccari, a fellow health inspector who shared a cubicle with Farook.

The suspects in the San Bernardino holiday party shooting were armed with four guns, an explosive device and several magazines of ammunition in a "well-planned" attack, police and federal officials said.

Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, a U.S.-born health inspector for San Bernardino County, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were carrying two .223-caliber assault rifles and two semi-automatic handguns.

Two of the four weapons were found to be legally purchased, sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.


An "explosive device" was found at the scene of the Wednesday's shooting spree, while items made to look like pipe bombs were thrown during the pursuit, according to Bureau of Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokeswoman Meredith Davis.

"They were in tactical gear and had several mags full of ammunition fashioned to their body so they were ready for a gunfight should that occur," Davis said. "With my experiences with other mass shootings, there are indicators this was well-planned out and it was to be violent in nature."

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said the two .223-caliber assault rifles were a DPMS model and a Smith & Wesson MMP 15 model, while the two semi-automatic hand guns were manufactured by llama and Smith & Wesson.

"The weapons we recovered — two long guns and two pistols — they will also have serial numbers on them that we can trace as long as they were produced by manufacturers either here in the U.S. or imported to the U.S.," Davis said.


Bomb technicians were sent to make safe the explosive device located at the Inland Regional Center, a state-run center for people with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino, Davis added. The device was found during a sweep of the scene.

She added that fears of pipe bombs were based on "an abundance of caution" after similar tactics were used by the Boston Marathon bombers.

"I do recall in the Boston bombing that they threw devices, explosive devices at the police as they were being pursued," Davis said. "They planned that out very thoroughly, I would make a connection to that."


However, ATF experts found that the items thrown were in fact "a very thick pipe with a piece of cloth that was made to look like a fuse [but] did not contain any explosives."

Burguan echoed her comments that the assault appeared to have been well-planned.

He reporters: "I think that, based upon what we have seen and based upon how they were equipped, there had to be some degree of planning that went into this. I don't think they just ran home, put on these types of tactical clothes, grabbed guns and came back on a spur of the moment."

Davis described the involvement of a woman in the attacks as "odd."

"Being a female that is experienced with firearms and explosives ... in my world it's odd to me ... when we look at cases like this across the U.S. and maybe across the world, it is unusual to have a female suspect," she said.

They came prepared to do what they did as if they were on a mission,” Burguan said. “They were dressed and equipped in a way that indicate they were prepared.”

Before the shooting, witnesses told police that one person left the holiday party after some kind of incident, Burguan said.

“Somebody did leave; there was some type of dispute or something when somebody left that party,” Burguan said. “But we have no idea if those are the people that came back.”