North Carolina teen charged with murder over role in San Diego mosque shooting

A grand jury in North Carolina indicted a 17 year old girl Monday on charges connected to a mosque shooting in San Diego that killed three people, accusing her of recording and spreading a live video of the attack rather than carrying out the shooting itself.

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill told reporters that officials pursued state charges because North Carolina law allows the girl to be tried as an adult. He said she faces a possible sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted under state charges, compared with a likely three or four year sentence had she instead faced federal charges.

The May 18 shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego killed three men who were later credited with preventing further bloodshed at a time when roughly 140 children were present at the mosque’s school. The victims, identified as security guard Amin Abdullah, 51, caretaker Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57, whose wife worked as a teacher at the center, were remembered as heroes during a memorial service held in the aftermath of the attack.

The two gunmen, Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, took their own lives inside their vehicle after fleeing the scene. Investigators said the pair had also planned additional attacks targeting a Jewish temple and a predominantly African American high school.

Authorities arrested Sarah Lindsey Santiago last week, and the indictment handed up Monday charges her with three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy. A news agency was unable to identify any attorney currently representing Santiago.

O’Neill explained that a person can be found guilty of aiding and abetting if they share the same criminal intent as the person who commits the crime and fail to intervene, even without being physically present at the scene. According to a press release from his office, Santiago had agreed before the attack to livestream the shooting, distribute the recording publicly, and later release a manifesto written by the attackers to justify their actions.

O’Neill described the two shooters as part of what he called an underground subculture that radicalizes people toward horrific violence, characterizing it as an echo chamber built on intense hatred toward different cultures and religions. He said the attackers’ manifesto suggested Vazquez and Clark harbored hostility toward people regardless of skin color, political affiliation, religion or ethnicity, and said individuals within this hate driven subculture communicate with one another through encoded online platforms.

Investigators determined that three people watched a livestream of the attack as it happened, O’Neill said. He said officials initially knew only that one viewer was a woman located in the Eastern time zone, before later identifying her as Santiago. He declined to say whether authorities had identified the other two viewers or whether they might also face charges in connection with the attack.