A 17-year-old from North Carolina now faces murder charges after recording and disseminating a livestream of the shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
Forsyth County district attorney Jim O’Neill announced at a Winston-Salem news conference that the girl, whose name was not released, was arrested last week and that a grand jury on Monday returned an indictment charging her with three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy. The indictment follows prosecutors’ assertion that she recorded the attackers’ livestream and published their manifesto.
O’Neill told reporters the aiding-and-abetting charges carry the same penalties under North Carolina law as if the accused had carried out the attack herself. “The individual here, locally, was the person who was recording the livestream,” he said. “She disseminated that information and she published their manifesto.” The district attorney made those remarks as the teen was due to begin the school year.
Prosecutors link her actions to a May attack in San Diego carried out by Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18. The pair entered the Islamic Center before being driven back outside by a security guard who exchanged gunfire while initiating a lockdown, a move that helped protect roughly 140 children nearby. The attackers killed the guard, Amin Abdullah, and two other men, then took their own lives in a vehicle nearby, investigators say.
The attackers left behind rambling, vitriolic writings that cited the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks as an influence, and authorities say the teenager disseminated those materials. The charges allege her actions went beyond passive observation, making her criminally responsible under state aiding-and-abetting statutes.
The indictment transfers the case into the North Carolina criminal process, where prosecutors will pursue the counts returned by the grand jury. Defense responses and next court dates were not disclosed at the news conference. The development places new legal focus on how recording and sharing extremist violence online can be prosecuted when authorities tie dissemination to the perpetrators’ actions.
