North Carolina teen indicted in San Diego mosque attack

A 17-year-old North Carolina girl has been indicted on murder charges after authorities said she recorded a livestream of a San Diego mosque shooting that killed three people and helped spread the attackers’ white supremacist writings.

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced Monday that the girl, whose name was not released during a news conference in Winston-Salem, was arrested last week and indicted by a grand jury just before she was due to begin the school year. She faces three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy, The Guardian reported.

“The individual here, locally, was the person who was recording the livestream,” O’Neill said. “She disseminated that information and she published their manifesto.”

O’Neill said North Carolina law treats someone who aids and abets a crime as guilty of that crime “just as if he or she had personally done all of the acts necessary to constitute the crime.” He said the aiding-and-abetting charges carry the same penalties as if she had carried out the attack herself.

“The thought of her going back to school or with the weekend approaching, holy days approaching, we didn’t know what she was capable of,” O’Neill said.

Authorities have identified the two shooters as Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18. They stormed the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18 before a security guard exchanged gunfire with them and forced them back outside while initiating a lockdown. Officials said his actions helped protect 140 children who were inside or nearby.

Police said the gunmen killed the guard, Amin Abdullah, and two other men, identified by CBS News as Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad, before taking their own lives in a vehicle nearby.

O’Neill said the livestream was recorded using GoPro helmets worn by the gunmen. He said the attackers had planned additional violence after the mosque shooting.

“Their plan that day was to commit mass murders not only at the mosque but to follow up at a local Jewish temple and finally at a predominantly African American high school there in town,” he said.

Authorities had previously said the teens had stockpiled 30 guns and a crossbow, weapons taken from Clark’s parents.

The writings left behind by the attackers were described as rambling and filled with hatred toward a wide range of people. CBS News, which reviewed the document, reported that it opened with an antisemitic diatribe, called for a violent race war and referenced “accelerationism,” described as a violent form of white supremacist ideology that advocates the destruction of society. The writings also cited the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, as a model for the violence.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement Monday that the investigation into “the horrific murders of three innocent people targeting the Islamic Center of San Diego includes identifying anyone who has potential criminal liability.”

“We are fully aware of the prosecution by the Forsyth County District Attorney’s Office in North Carolina in connection with the San Diego murders and we are grateful for the efforts by DA Jim O’Neill and his office,” the office said.