The FBI has not yet accounted for where two shooters were during the 18 minutes after the Dec. 2 massacre at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. Officials appealed to the public on Tuesday, Jan. 5 for information to fill that gap.
After spraying bullets into a conference room where San Bernardino county health employees were celebrating a holiday party, Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik spent nearly four hours “zig-zagging around” around San Bernardino and Redlands in a rented black SUV until they were killed in a gunfight with police, reported the Press Enterprise.
Officials said that investigators have not been able to account for Farook and Malik’s disappearance between 12:49 pm and 1:17 pm, just more than two hours after the attack which occurred around 11 am.
“Using witnesses, traffic cameras and surveillance cameras, agents have accounted for 3 hours and 42 minutes of the couple’s movements from the massacre to the shootout, but are missing information about where they were between 12:59 and 1:17 p.m.,” said David Bowdich, head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office. “There is no rhyme or reason we can make for it yet. We’re missing that 18 minutes.”
Bowdich also confirmed there was no evidence of a secondary target, nor evidence yet that Farook and Malik met with anyone after the shooting.
“As of today, we do not see any indication of a foreign-directed terrorist attack. This seems to be an inspired terrorist act,” Bowdich told reporters gathered at the San Bernardino Police Department headquarters, emphasizing the need to be “absolutely certain” of the couple’s immediate activities following the shooting.
“We have scrubbed a number of social media,” he added. “That was one our big focuses to ensure that we are able to hopefully determine the motivation of Farook and his wife.”
Bowdich said that investigators were specifically interested in finding any photographic or other electronic evidence that could pinpoint the couple’s locations during that brief window of time, shortly before their trail was picked up by authorities, said USA Today.
“Authorities were able to track the couple’s whereabouts until just before 1 pm, when Farook and Malik were near the intersection of the I-215 and 10 freeways,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. Eighteen minutes later, the couple’s SUV was at the Waterman Avenue exit on the 10 Freeway.
The couple died around 3:00 pm in a shootout with police, after they were spotted by an undercover detective eight minutes earlier, driving by their Redlands home.
At the press conference, Bowdich gave the most detailed timeline to date of the events that occurred last Dec. 2nd.
According to the FBI affidavit, Farook left his Redlands home at 8:37 am and arrived at the Inland Regional Center 10 minutes later, carrying a bag containing a pipe bomb made of three galvanized steel pipes and smokeless powder, and attached to a remote-control toy car. The bomb was “armed and ready to detonate.” Agents found a remote control for a toy car in the couple’s SUV.
An anonymous law enforcement source told the Los Angeles Times that it was possible the couple were unable to detonate the device because they were either out of range or because sprinklers that had gone off in the regional center interfered with the explosives.
“Farook spent about two hours at the center the morning of the shooting, socializing with coworkers gathered for a holiday event. Authorities haven’t found any evidence to support suggestions that a workplace dispute led to the shooting,” Bowdich said, adding that Farook’s demeanor was normal that morning and that photos taken of him inside the facility during the event didn’t show anything out of the ordinary.
Farook left the work party at 10:37 am, leaving the bag behind, possibly to meet with his wife. Authorities still don’t know where Malik was before her husband left the Inland Regional Center, but said it was possible that she went with her husband to the center that morning and waited in the SUV.
The FBI declined to say where Farook went after he left. But a law enforcement official said investigators “do not believe Farook would have had time to go back to his Redlands home before the attack.”
When Farook returned to the event at 10:56 am, accompanied by his wife and several weapons, including two military-style rifles, they immediately opened fire, killing 14 people and injuring 22.
The shooting lasted about five minutes, according to reports.
Bowdich also presented a map with an L-shaped outline of the areas the couple traveled through after the shooting, from their home in Redlands, where they lived, west and north along the I-10 and I-215 corridors to San Bernardino.
Another poster beside the map shows a photo of the SUV they were driving: a black 2015 Ford Expedition with dark-tinted rear windows and a Utah license plate, X52-3RY. The car had been rented at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Redlands. Workers there declined to comment Tuesday.
Bowdich described the couple’s known driving pattern as “a lot of zig-zagging around, going back and forth on the highway, going up and going down; there is no rhyme or reason to it that we can find yet. Maybe that 18 minutes closes that gap, maybe it doesn’t.”
The FBI is asking anyone who might have seen the couple or captured them on surveillance cameras to call at 1-800-225-5324, option 4, to help investigators gather evidence. Bowdich said callers who pass a screening by an operator may be given a website where they can upload any photos or video.
“If you’ve not been talked to, and you have some sort of media in your holdings or you have surveillance camera footage, or cell phone footage, please give that to us,” he asked.
A friend and neighbor of Farook’s, 24-year-old Enrique Marquez, who allegedly purchased two of the guns used in the rampage, was ordered to remain in federal custody. Marquez also is accused of plotting at least two other assaults with Farook in 2011 and 2012 that were not carried out.
