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TechYouTube

Police Share More Information on YouTube Shooter and Possible Motive

By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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By
Jonathan Vanian
Jonathan Vanian
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April 4, 2018, 2:17 PM ET

Police officers in San Bruno, California revealed more information on Wednesday regarding the recent shooting at YouTube’s headquarters in which three people suffered gunshot wounds.

San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters that the shooter, 39-year-old San Diego resident Nasim Najafi Aghdam, appeared to have fired randomly without targeting anyone in particular. Shortly after opening fire, Aghdam killed herself.

Regarding a possible motive for the shooting, Barberini said that local police “know she was upset with YouTube.” Prior to the shooting, Aghdam maintained a website in which she claimed that YouTube was censoring her and unfairly filtering videos she posted on the online video service. Aghdam’s YouTube channel has since been removed.

Law enforcement is not prepared to label the shooting an act of terrorism, a process that “will take weeks,” Barberini said.

Barberini said that Aghdam visited a gun range hours before she arrived at the YouTube campus, but declined to release the name of the gun range. Aghdam legally owned the Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic handgun she used for the shooting, but Barberini did not know where she purchased the firearm.

He said San Bruno police are investigating how Aghdam was able to enter the open courtyard at the YouTube campus where the shooting occurred. She may have gained access to the courtyard from a nearby parking garage, he explained. When asked about reports indicating that Aghdam slept in her car overnight prior to the shooting, Barberini said that appears to be the case, but she “may have stayed at a hotel” as well.

The San Jose Mercury reported that Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, and family members reported her missing to police. Mountain View Police officers found Aghdam sleeping in her car on Monday evening, the newspaper reported.

“Our officers made contact with the woman after the license plate of her vehicle matched that of a missing person out of Southern California,” Mountain View Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson told the newspaper.

Barberini said that San Bruno police were not in contact with Mountain View police prior to the shooting.

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Regarding the three people wounded in the shooting, Barberini said he did not know whether or not they were YouTube employees. San Francisco General Hospital officials told The San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday that it released two female victims on Tuesday evening, and that the third victim’s condition has has been upgraded from critical to serious.

Update: Wednesday 4:45 PM PST

YouTube issued a public statement on the shooting, and said that it is “increasing the security we have at of all of our offices worldwide to make them more secure not only in the near term, but long-term.”

An update from YouTube. pic.twitter.com/HG4LgCupRi

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) April 4, 2018

 

About the Author
By Jonathan Vanian
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Jonathan Vanian is a former Fortune reporter. He covered business technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data privacy, and other topics.

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