A heavily armed man and woman opened fire on a holiday banquet for his co-workers, killing 14 people and seriously wounding more than a dozen others, authorities have said.
Yesterday’s shooting happened at a social services centre for the disabled where the suspect’s colleagues with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health were renting space for a celebration.
Hours later, the suspects died in a shoot-out with police.
It was the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since the attack at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, three years ago that left 26 children and adults dead.
San Bernardino police chief Jarrod Burguan identified one dead suspect as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, the other as Tashfeen Malik, 27, his wife or fiancee.
Mr Burguan said Farook was born in the United States but added he did not know Malik’s background.
The attackers invaded the Inland Regional Centre about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, opening fire in a conference area where county health officials were having an employee banquet, said Marybeth Feild, president and chief executive of the non-profit centre.
“They came prepared to do what they did, as if they were on a mission,” Mr Burguan said.
Farook attended the event before leaving.
Co-worker Patrick Baccari said he was sitting at the same table as Farook, who suddenly disappeared, leaving his coat on his chair.
Mr Baccari said when the shooting started, he sought refuge in a bathroom and suffered minor wounds from shrapnel slicing through the wall.
Mr Baccari described Farook as reserved and said he showed no signs of unusual behaviour. Earlier this year he travelled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a wife, Mr Baccari said.
The FBI is investigating several possible motives, according to David Bowdich, assistant director of the bureau’s Los Angeles office.
Farook was a restaurant inspector for the health department, according to public records. Police chief Mr Burguan said he had been a county employee for five years.
The couple dropped off their six-month-old daughter with relatives on Wednesday morning, saying they had a doctor’s appointment, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said after talking with family.
Farhan Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, told reporters he last spoke to his brother-in-law about a week ago. He said he was in shock, condemned the violence, and had “absolutely no idea why he would do this.”
About four hours after the morning carnage, police hunting for the killers riddled a black SUV with gunfire in a shoot-out two miles from the social services centre.
Farook and Malik were found with assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns, and were wearing “assault-style clothing” with ammunition attached, authorities said.
In the morning, as the gunfire echoed through the large three-building complex, some people locked themselves in offices, waiting for police and texting or making phone calls to loved ones.
“People shot. In the office waiting for cops. Pray for us. I am locked in an office,” Terry Petit’s daughter, who works at the centre, texted him.
Olivia Navarro said her daughter, Jamile Navarro, a case manager at the social service centre, called her and whispered that she was hiding in a locked room.
“I said, ‘All right, I’ll be there, turn off the lights, don’t make a sound’,” Ms Navarro said. “And that was it.” Her daughter survived.
According to the centre’s web page, it has a client base of more than 30,000 people and their families. It is a privately run non-profit, the largest of its kind in California with about 670 employees.
Seventeen people were wounded, according to authorities. Ten were sent to hospital in critical condition, and three were in serious condition, fire chief Tom Hannemann said.
One witness, Glenn Willwerth, who runs a business across the street, said he heard 10 to 15 shots and then saw an SUV with tinted windows pull out “very calmly, very slowly” and drive off.
As the manhunt dragged on, stores, office buildings and schools were locked down in the city, and roads blocked off.
With police looking for a dark SUV, officers staking out a home in the nearby city of Redlands saw a vehicle matching that description. Public records show the home is a possible residence of a family member of Farook.
Authorities pursued the SUV, and one officer among nearly two dozen involved in the shoot-out suffered a minor injury.
A fake bomb – a metal pipe stuffed with cloth – was thrown from the SUV during the chase, said Agent Meredith Davis of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Three explosive devices – thought to be real and all connected to one another – were found at the social service centre and later detonated by a bomb squad, police said.
President Barack Obama urged the country to take steps to reduce mass shootings, including stricter gun laws and stronger background checks.
“The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world,” Mr Obama told CBS.
Federal authorities said that the two assault rifles and two handguns used in the violence were purchased legally.
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