Woman in San Bernardino Mass Shooting Made Pledge to Islamic State on Facebook (Updated)

An investigator examines an SUV in which two suspects were killed Wednesday during a shootout with police in San Bernardino, Calif. (Jae C. Hong / AP)

UPDATE: The woman who helped carry out the mass shooting in San Bernardino on Wednesday had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a Facebook post, federal law enforcement officials said Friday, according to the New York Times.

There is no evidence the Islamic State directed the woman, Tashfeen Malik, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, to launch the attacks, which killed 14 and wounded 21, the officials said. But the Facebook post has led investigators to believe that the couple took inspiration from the group, they said.

“At this point we believe they were more self-radicalized and inspired by the group than actually told to do the shooting,” one of the officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Meanwhile, the stories of the 14 people who died Wednesday are told in the Los Angeles Times.

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UPDATE: In a developing story posted Thursday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times released details about some of the shooting victims.

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UPDATE: The FBI is treating its inquiry into the San Bernardino massacre as a possible terrorism case, law enforcement officials said Thursday, according to the New York Times. Officials pointed to materials the suspects stockpiled, their Middle East travels and evidence that one of them had been in touch with people with Islamist extremist views.

“We do not yet know the motive,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles, said in a news conference.

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As investigators searched for a motive in the mass killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, details about the slain suspects emerged Thursday.

Police said the suspects — identified as Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, a married couple — opened fire at a social services center holiday banquet at the San Bernardino County Public Health Department. In addition to the 14 killed, 17 people were wounded in the attack. Farook and Malik were armed with .223-caliber assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns, according to authorities.

The couple died hours later in a shootout with police.

The New York Times reports:

On Wednesday morning, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, left their 6-month-old daughter with Mr. Farook’s mother, telling her they were going out for a doctor’s appointment, a relative said.

By nightfall, it was clear that was a ruse, as the police said the couple spent the day carrying out a rampage at a social services center that killed at least 14 people before leading officers on a sprawling chase that ended with the two dead in a bloody gunfight in a suburban neighborhood.

While investigators were still searching for a motive, a picture began to emerge of how the couple had hidden their plan even from close relatives. To some, they appeared steeped in the usual routines of work and parenthood. For instance, they had registered online for gifts for their newborn, including a car seat and diapers.

Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik met on a dating website, according to Mr. Farook’s brother-in-law, Farhan Khan. He said that Mr. Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia at least two times: first to meet Ms. Malik’s family and then to marry her. …

… Chief Jarrod Burguan of the San Bernardino Police Department said at a news conference Wednesday night that the attack did not seem to be “a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

Learn more about the suspects here.

Farook had a difficult upbringing, according to the Los Angeles Times:

In 2006 divorce filings, his mother detailed a violent marital history in which her children often had to intervene.

Rafia Farook said her husband of 24 years was physically and verbally abusive and was “negligent and an alcoholic,” according to documents filed in Riverside County Superior Court. Her husband, she said, forced her and three of her children to move out. They moved into an Irvine residence.

Later, in multiple requests for domestic-violence protection, Rafia Farook detailed the maltreatment she said she encountered and that her children witnessed: Her husband had once drunkenly dropped a TV on her. Another time, he pushed her toward a car. After a drunken slumber, he shouted expletives and threw dishes in the kitchen.

Read more about what court documents contained here.

President Obama said in a statement Thursday morning that it was possible that the attacks were terrorist-related, but it was also possible they were work-related, The New York Times reported.

Law enforcement still does not know the reason this “terrible event occurred,” Obama added.

The New York Times reports:

Two of the guns recovered were bought by one of the suspects killed in the shootout, and the other two were bought by a third person who is not considered a suspect, said a senior federal law enforcement official, who was spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We believe all four were purchased legally, but are still taking a close look at the two firearms bought by the” person who is not a suspect, the official said.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed that it had traced all four guns, and that two were purchased legally by someone linked to the investigation. But neither the senior official nor the bureau would identify either buyer by name, nor say which two weapons were bought by a suspect, or where they were bought.

Officials said the two assault rifles were variants of the AR-15, the semiautomatic version of the military M-16 rifle; one was made by DPMS Panther Arms, and the other was a Smith & Wesson M&P model, a designation meaning military and police. The senior law enforcement official said one handgun was made by Llama, and the other by Smith and Wesson.