Teen Who Recorded San Diego Mosque Attack Charged With Murder

A 17-year-old North Carolina girl who recorded a livestream of a shooting that killed three people at a San Diego mosque and disseminated the attackers' white-supremacist writings has been charged with murder by aiding and abetting, a district attorney said Monday. Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O'Neill said at a news conference in Winston-Salem that the girl, identified in court records as Sarah Lindsey Santiago, was arrested last week, the AP reports. A grand jury indicted her on three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy Monday. Under North Carolina law, the aiding-and-abetting charges carry the same penalties as if the girl had committed the attack herself, O'Neill said.

Under state law, a 17-year-old "who engages in this unbelievably terroristic and treacherous behavior can be treated as an adult in North Carolina," O'Neill said, per the San Diego Union-Tribune. According to the indictment, Santiago agreed prior to the attack that she would record the livestream, distribute it, and release a document written by the attackers. She carried out those tasks, it said, and she purchased a patch bearing a white-supremacist symbol and sent it to one of the gunmen to wear during the attack. "The individual here, locally, was the person who was recording the livestream," O'Neill said. "She disseminated that information and she published their manifesto."

• Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, stormed the Islamic Center on May 18 before being driven back outside by a security guard who exchanged gunfire with them as he initiated a lockdown, helping to protect 140 children who were just steps away.

• The pair killed the guard, Amin Abdullah, and two other men before taking their own lives in a vehicle nearby. They left behind rambling writings full of vitriol against a wide range of people, and cited the shooter who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, as one of their models for their violence.
• O'Neill revealed new details of the plot on Monday, the Union-Tribune reports. "Their plan that day was to commit mass murders not only at the mosque but to follow up at a local Jewish temple and finally at a predominantly African American high school there in town." He said the teens wore GoPro helmets to livestream the attack. O'Neill said their plan was twofold. "Number one was to kill as many people possible on that day. And secondly, they wanted this—their carnage and destruction—recorded, livestreamed, and disseminated out."