San Diego mosque attack: Two teenage suspects shared 'broad hatred' of religions and races

On Monday morning in San Diego, two teenagers walked into the Islamic Center carrying rifles and pistols. By the time police arrived four minutes after the first 911 call at 11:43 a.m., three men lay dead outside the mosque. Less than a quarter mile away, in a parked vehicle, the two attackers—aged 17 and 18—were found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Five people in total would not leave that day alive.

The attack began before dawn in the suspects' minds. Around 9:40 that morning, the mother of one of the teenagers had called police in distress. Her son had taken her firearms and her car, she told dispatchers. He was dressed in camouflage. She feared he might be suicidal and said he could be with a friend. Police would later learn the two suspects had met online, discovered they lived in the same area, and had been radicalized through digital channels—though authorities have not detailed how that process unfolded or what specific content shaped their ideology.

When officers responded to the mosque, they found the attackers dressed in military fatigues covered with Nazi symbols. Video footage recovered from a head-mounted camera worn by one of the suspects shows them arriving at the parking lot, entering the building, and opening fire. The weapons themselves bore slogans and racial slurs scrawled across their surfaces. The footage captures the moment they returned to their vehicle and fired through the windows before one suspect shot the other and then himself.

The three men killed at the mosque were not random targets. Amin Abdullah, who had worked at the Islamic Center for more than a decade, was described by those who knew him as a fixture of welcome and warmth. Police Chief Scott Wahl said Abdullah's actions that day stopped the violence from claiming far more lives. "It's fair to say his actions were heroic," Wahl told reporters. "Undoubtedly, he saved lives today." A spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations called Abdullah "a shining light" and "a true hero, a martyr." Nader Awad's children had grown up within the mosque's walls; his wife taught at the school housed there. Mansour Kaziha maintained the mosque's grounds and ran its convenience store. They were woven into the fabric of the community.

When investigators searched three residences connected to the suspects, they recovered more than thirty guns—pistols, rifles, shotguns—along with a crossbow. All were registered to one of the suspect's parents. They also seized ammunition, tactical gear, and the teenagers' mobile phones. In the suspects' vehicle, authorities found documents that revealed the scope of their hatred. FBI Special Agent Mark Remily described writings that outlined "religious and racial beliefs of how the world they envisioned should look." The documents made clear, he said, that "these subjects did not discriminate on who they hated." Their animosity stretched across multiple faiths and races—a hatred so broad it encompassed nearly everyone outside their own ideology.

Police Chief Wahl confirmed the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime, citing the presence of "hate rhetoric" and the ideological materials recovered. Yet investigators are still working to understand the full scope of what the suspects intended. Wahl said authorities are trying to determine what their "intended target location" was and how far their plans extended. The two teenagers, connected through the internet and bound by a shared worldview of racial and religious supremacy, had moved from the digital realm into the physical world with lethal purpose. The question now is whether the Islamic Center was their only target, or whether it was the beginning of something larger that ended only when they turned their weapons on each other.