New evidence has confirmed that Monday’s deadly attack on the Islamic Centre of San Diego was a white supremacist hate crime, where a massacre of young children was only averted by the heroism of a security guard.
Three people were killed when the gunmen opened fire at the centre before dying of self-inflicted gunshot wounds nearby.
Hero of the hour
The victims have been named as Amin Abdullah, a 51-year-old mosque security guard; Mansour Kaziha, 78, a long-time staff member; and Nadir Awad, 57, a community member who lived across the street. No children were among the dead, and all were successfully evacuated.
Abdullah’s actions in the first moments of the attack are now being credited with saving many lives. When the two gunmen ran past him in the car park, he returned fire and immediately radioed to begin locking down the mosque.
Children targeted
Police Chief Scott Wahl said his intervention delayed and deterred the attackers from reaching the main areas of the facility, where as many as 140 children were within fifteen feet of the shooters at the time and were plainly the intended target.
Kaziha and Awad are also being praised for leading the gunmen away from the school building and back towards the car park, where they were killed.
The two shooters, identified by police as 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez, both from San Diego, were found dead inside a BMW from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
Clark’s mother had earlier phoned police in a panic to report that he and a friend had disappeared with her car and several guns. Police were searching for them when the attack took place.
The nature of the evidence left behind removes any doubt about motive. Police found anti-Islamic material in the vehicle, hate speech and Nazi numerical codes written on the firearms, and a suicide note referring to racial pride.
Nazi network
A jerry can in the car bore an SS logo, and Clark was wearing a vest displaying both a Sonnenrad, the Black Sun symbol favoured by neo-nazis, and the logo of Atomwaffen Division, the American accelerationist terror network.
Over thirty guns were recovered when police searched the shooters’ homes.
A 75-page manifesto found circulating online after the attack, comprising a separate statement from each shooter, leaves no doubt about their ideology. Both were white supremacist accelerationists who subscribed to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory.
Both claimed that Muslims and Black people were controlled by Jews, with one describing them as “bioweapons.” Vazquez’s statement praised Adolf Hitler; Clark described himself as a Christian eco-fascist and also expressed incel grievances.
Warning signs ignored
Both named Christchurch killer Brenton Tarrant as an inspiration and framed the attack explicitly as a tribute to him. The FBI has confirmed the pair were radicalised online. The attack – including the deaths of the shooters – was livestreamed.
It has since emerged that Chula Vista Police had spoken to Vazquez in 2025 after someone who knew him raised concerns about his interest in extremist ideology and mass-casualty attacks. The warning went unheeded.
