5 dead, including 2 teen suspects, after shooting at San Diego's largest mosque

Two teenage gunmen opened fire on Monday at the Islamic Centre of San Diego, California, killing a security guard and two other men outside the mosque before the suspects were found dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said. San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said local law enforcement and the FBI were investigating the attack on the largest mosque in San Diego County as a hate crime. However, no precise motive or precipitating incident for the gun violence has been publicly suggested by authorities. All of the children attending a day school at the mosque complex were accounted for and safe after the shooting, which erupted at about 11:40am PDT (1840 GMT), officials said. At an evening news conference, Wahl disclosed that the mother of one of the two suspects had called police about two hours before the shooting to report that her son, whom she described as suicidal, had run away from home, taking three guns she owned and her vehicle. Two teens dressed in camouflage According to the chief, the mother said her son was with a companion and the two were dressed in camouflage. Police initiated efforts to track down the youths and were dispatching patrols to a nearby shopping mall and the son’s high school as a precaution when calls came in reporting the mosque shooting. The chief declined to disclose the contents of a note he said was found by the runaway’s mother. Prior to the shooting, police were not made aware of any “specific threat” to the mosque or any religious centre, school, shopping area, or any other place, Wahl said. Police instead were confronting a case of “generalised hate rhetoric and hate speech,” which together with reports of a runaway teenager with multiple weapons wearing camouflage “triggered a much bigger threat assessment”. The attack came the week before Eidul Azha and the Hajj pilgrimage. “We have never experienced a tragedy like this before,” Taha Hassane, the imam and director of the Islamic Centre, told reporters. “It