SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Enrique Marquez Jr., who bought the assault rifles used in an attack that killed 14 people this month, was charged Thursday with conspiring to carry out two other attacks in 2012, federal officials said.
Marquez and Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters Dec. 2, had planned to attack other targets in southern California, including a nearby community college and highway, according to charging documents filed Thursday.
The documents provided the clearest look yet not only of Marquez but of Farook, who died in a shootout with police after the massacre. Farook was interested in violent extremism at least two years before he and future wife Tashfeen Malik corresponded online about waging violent jihad, according to Marquez’s account to the government. The FBI also alleges he was the force guiding Marquez toward violent extremism.
The charges against Marquez are the first to stem from the investigation into the massacre, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
The FBI arrested Marquez, 24, on Thursday.
Farook and Marquez never attempted to carry out their earlier plans, but their plotting reached a high level of detail.
In their plan to attack California 91, a heavily trafficked road that runs through the heart of Riverside, the two men considered first throwing pipe bombs into the road to stop traffic, the FBI alleges. Authorities say they even scoped out a hill from which one could watch for approaching law enforcement after the bombs exploded, while the other moved among the stopped vehicles firing into cars and killing motorists.
In another plot, the two men discussed going to Riverside City College, a community college both men had attended, and throwing pipe bombs into the cafeteria before attacking another location.
Authorities also said Thursday that in addition to buying the guns used by the husband-wife attackers, Marquez had bought explosive materials used to construct the pipe bomb authorities found at the Inland Regional Center after the shooting attack.
Many of the charges filed Thursday pertain to these earlier plots.
The complaint also states that hours after the shooting, Marquez called 911 to report that Farook, his former neighbor, had used his gun in the attack.
“My neighbor. He did the San Bernardino shooting,” Marquez told the 911 operator. He called the shooter a profanity and said he “used my gun.”
“While there currently is no evidence that Mr. Marquez participated in the Dec. 2, 2015, attack or had advance knowledge of it, his prior purchase of the firearms and ongoing failure to warn authorities about Farook’s intent to commit mass murder had fatal consequences,” U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker of the Central District of California said.
After Marquez moved to Riverside, his next-door neighbor introduced him to Islam.
By 2007, Marquez had converted to the religion, and Farook began educating him about the views of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born imam and Islamic lecturer who inspired numerous terrorist attacks and was killed in a 2011 drone strike. The two men read Al-Qaeda’s English-language Inspire magazine, which has published directions for building bombs, and watched videos promoting violent extremism.
Marquez bought two assault rifles for Farook — one in November 2011, the other in February 2012 — with the intention of using them in these attacks, he told investigators. Investigators note that Marquez said he bought them because he looked Caucasian, while Farook had a Middle Eastern appearance. Marquez went on to sign forms stating he was buying them for himself, not as a straw purchase where the guns were intended for another person.
Both guns were recovered at the scene of the firefight between police officers and Farook and Malik, and investigators say they were used in the attack at the Inland Regional Center that day.
Some Democratic lawmakers responded immediately with vows to push legislation to tighten gun trafficking laws.
“We must do everything we can to ensure that deadly weapons — like the rifles used in the San Bernardino shootings — do not fall into the hands of terrorists, violent criminals and drug traffickers,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said. “Law enforcement officials have complained for years that they lack effective tools necessary to investigate and deter straw purchasers and gun traffickers. Today’s arrest of the individual who provided the rifles for the San Bernardino shooters is a reminder that we need to strengthen our laws to give law enforcement agents and prosecutors the tools they need to fight terrorism and violent crime.”
