San Bernardino shooting updates: Marking one week since the attack

Dec. 9, 2015 11 AM PT

Key developments

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday the shooters began scheming to carry out a terror attack before they were engaged and before she moved to the United States last year.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether they had links to foreign terror organizations.
Farook got a $28,500 cash loan weeks before the attack, according to federal officials.
A friend of one of the shooters entered a mental health facility after the attack. Investigators said they were looking into whether he provided two of the guns recovered after the massacre.
Officials both Malik and Farook pledged allegiance to Islamic State in an online post, and Farook had contact with people from at least two terrorist organizations overseas. Malik had studied at a Pakistan seminary known for anti-Western, fundamentalist views.
In a rare address from the Oval Office, President Obama called on Congress to authorize military operations against Islamic State and tighten gun restrictions.

The attack

Farook, who worked for the county, and Malik opened fire at a holiday party in the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino on Dec. 2.
Fourteen people were killed and 21 wounded, most of them county employees. The Times is collecting their stories.
Both attackers were killed in a gun battle with police. Farook, who was born in the United States, and Malik, a Pakistan national, had an arsenal of ammunition and pipe bombs in their Redlands home.

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11:00 a.m.

Marking one week since the attack began

At this time one week ago, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, pushed through the doors of a holiday gathering and began shooting.

Before they fled, 14 people, most co-workers of Farook's, were dead. Twenty-one others were wounded.

The first official word of the attack came in a tweet from the San Bernardino Fire Department's official Twitter account.

Twelve minutes later, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department warned that there was an "active shooter."

Follow The Times' latest coverage of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, on our full coverage page.

9:28 A.M.

Senator: How could Malik get a K-1 visa?

A photo from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook as they passed through O'Hare International Airport in July 2014.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), asked how Malik could get a visa and pass a K-1 visa test “when she was communicating about jihad online?”

“How does it sometimes get missed?” Schumer asked FBI Director James Comey. “This is going to cause great consternation to the American people, where we have two people talking about jihad for a couple of years, and most Americans have the assumption we’re on top of things like this.”

Comey said that in general, FBI agents know only about private communication “if we have some reason to believe it’s going on.” (Officials previously have said neither of the shooters was known to law enforcement.)

Then, the FBI chief said, agents would seek court permission to listen in to the communications, at least or until they “went dark” and started using encrypted devices to get around U.S. federal agents.

Read more about the fiancee visa Malik received and how those visas work here.

— Richard Serrano

8:27 A.M.

[The attack was carried out] with a single, repugnant purpose: to harm, frighten and intimidate anyone who believes in open and tolerant societies; in free and democratic governments, and in the right of every human being to live in peace, security and freedom.

Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, speaking to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London on Wednesday

8:11 A.M.

Watch live: Officials testify on Islamic State strategy

7:43 A.M.

FBI: Farook and Malik planned attack before she moved to U.S.

FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, his wife, began scheming to carry out a terror attack before they were engaged and before she moved to the United States on a fiancee visa last year.

Comey’s announcement about the couple’s past takes the investigation in a new direction, suggesting that Farook, a U.S. citizen, purposely traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to find a partner to help him carry out the attack.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Malik may have given false information on her visa application.

3:34 A.M.

'It was too close to home': Customers rush to gun stores

Frank Cobet of Get Loaded in Grand Terrace shows a customer a AR-15 rifle.

Matt Nicholson, a 23-year-old Redlands resident, said he had thought about buying a firearm in the past. But the attack that claimed 14 lives Wednesday at a San Bernardino social services center — five miles from Gun Boss Armory — made him decide to buy a gun.

"It was a little too close to home," he said.

Nicholson was one of a number of rattled customers streaming into gun stores this week in and around San Bernardino County, a relatively conservative region where gun culture has deeper roots than in California's coastal cities. As politicians and gun-control advocates seize on the San Bernardino shooting as a reason to restrict firearm access, many of those on the front lines of the massacre are seeking to arm themselves.

1:57 A.M.