SAN DIEGO, Calif. — A frantic search for a runaway 17-year-old boy, who had disappeared with his mother’s guns and car, ended in tragedy a few hours later Monday in a San Diego neighborhood, where police say he and a companion shot and killed three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego, then turned the guns on themselves in a car less than a mile away.
Three men were killed in front of the mosque, including a security guard, whose actions “helped minimize the situation,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said.
“Itap fair to say his actions were heroic and, undoubtedly, he saved lives today,” Wahl said.
The teen’s mother had told San Diego police two hours beforehand that she believed her son was suicidal, and that both he and the 18-year-old he was with were wearing camouflage, police said.
As police worked to locate the teens, sensing a larger public threat, they got the call about an active shooter at the Islamic Center, the largest mosque in the county.
About the same time, police received calls from people hearing active gunfire a couple of blocks away. Officers responded and found a landscaper who said he had been shot at.
Officers were then called to a location a few blocks away, where they found a BMW in the middle of the street with two bodies inside. They were the missing teen and his companion, dead of apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
Police did not release the names of the suspects or victims. A community member identified the slain security guard as Amin Abdullah, described as “beloved in the community.”
Authorities are investigating the rampage — which stretched across several blocks in the Clairemont neighborhood — as a hate crime, and the FBI is part of the response.
“We are considering this a hate crime until itap not,” Wahl said.
Wahl said the younger teen left a note, and there was “generalized hate rhetoric” involved, but he did not go into further detail.
The center’s imam, Taha Hassane, told reporters he was outraged that someone would target a place of worship. He said the mosque and all other places of worship “should always be protected.”
“People come to the Islamic Center to pray, to celebrate, to learn… This is something we have never expected,” he said.
“We’re all shocked. We’re all scared,” said Shrooq Barbakh, a member of the mosque. She also talked of being targeted. “When you wear a hijab in this world, they all attack you.”
Multiple crime scenes
The incident began Monday with the mother’s call at 9:42 a.m. What she conveyed to police — the guns, the note, the companion and the clothing — “began to elevate the threat level that we were perceiving,” Wahl said.
He noted that the information the woman provided “was not consistent with what we would typically see from somebody that is suicidal. That began to trigger a larger threat assessment picture.”
Wahl said police officers were sent to a mall in Fashion Valley a few miles south of the mosque after automated license plate readers detected the location of the car in the area.
Officers also learned that one of the teens was associated with nearby Madison High School, so they dispatched officers there as well.
Wahl reiterated that police had no specific information about an active threat against any site but responded to the locations out of precaution.
The active shooter call at the Islamic Center on Eckstrom Avenue came in at 11:43 a.m.
Officers arrived within four minutes. Outside of the center, they found three men dead. Active-shooter protocol kicked in, and police breached the worship center and adjacent elementary school, moving from room to room.
As they did, more calls came in. A landscaper had been shot or shot at along a nearby street. Wahl said the landscaper was unharmed, but his helmet may have deflected a bullet — “saved his life,” the chief said, noting, though, that it was still unclear what happened.
Then came a call from a person who found a car in the middle of Hatton Street. Two people were found dead.
Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily from the FBI’s San Diego field office said its bomb technicians “cleared the vehicle associated with the subjects.”
Police soon swarmed the home of the younger teen.
The teen was a high school senior at iHigh Virtual Academy, which is San Diego Unified’s online-only school. A San Diego Unified district spokesperson said the teen had been an iHigh student since 2021, when he was in eighth grade.
Last school year, the spokesperson said, the teen was part of the wrestling team at Madison High — his neighborhood school, the standard site for extracurricular activities for students of the virtual school.
Marne Celaya, 85, has been a next-door neighbor to the family of the younger teen since 2004. She said she didn’t talk with them about much beyond surface-level chats, but the family helped her on multiple occasions. They helped carry her groceries into her house — she uses a cane and walker — and for her 80th birthday, they brought her a cake.
She said the teen helped too, and would wave hi to her. “He seemed like a nice kid,” Celaya said. “Itap a total shock. I can’t believe it.”
‘Can we ever be safe?’
Wahl said there are video cameras at the Islamic Center that officers will need to review as they “try to sort and put this puzzle back together again.”
“We are in the process of serving search warrants tonight and on into the days ahead. We’re going to continue following any leads and any information that comes forward, as we’re all focused on figuring out how this happened and what could have been done to prevent it,” Wahl said.
Wahl said all the children who were attending school at the site were safe. “And I’ll tell you what got me — watching the kids come running out, just thankful to be alive,” he said, growing emotional.
Police established a reunification location a few blocks away. Following the shooting, dozens of parents stood behind police tape, waiting for word about their children. Once an officer informed them of the meetup point, many began running toward their cars to pick up their children.
Sarah Youssef, 19, said she grew up going to the mosque and was a student at its school. She looked forward to seeing the security guard, Abdullah, and his welcoming smile at the door.
She said he was “such a kind, kind spirit, always welcomed everyone who walked through those doors with a smile. And no matter (what) walk of life you were from, he was always there for anyone.”
He was also a key member of the mosque because of his role in keeping the community safe, she added. “He’s a cornerstone of our community, not only protecting us, but us feeling comfortable enough for us to go pray. And for those little kids to go to school, because we know there’s someone there thatap going to protect us. And thatap exactly what he did today. And unfortunately, it cost him his life.”
Youssef, a freshman at UC Irvine, said that over the years, the mosque had bolstered its security practices in the face of mounting Islamophobia and an increase in threats to the mosque.
The national Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, issued a statement strongly condemning “this horrifying act of violence.”
“No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school,” it said.
Tazheen Nizam, executive director of the San Diego CAIR chapter, said the organization is “trying to support any affected community members.”
She said that while the incident did not happen during prayer time, the center is still a busy site.
“The Islamic Center is a place of prayer, but also a place of learning,” she said. “There are kids there in the school right now.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on social media that the governor had been briefed on the situation and that the state’s Office of Emergency Services was coordinating with local law enforcement.
At the news conference, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria praised the police response.
“I want to assure our Muslim community that we will do everything it takes to make sure that you can feel safe in this city,” Gloria said. “No resource will be spared in making sure that our religious institutions and locations are protected in this sensitive time.”
Yusef Miller, a local activist with the Muslim community, pointed to an incident seven years ago in which a college student set fire to an Escondido mosque — a crime that remained unsolved until the youth opened fire on Chabad of Poway, killing one congregant and injuring three.
“We were all on heightened alert, and looking around our shoulder until that person was caught,” Miller said, “and even after that for any copycat types of assailants.
“Here we’re at the same point again, where now we have loss of life, we have a person that actually enters our sacred space and try to harm us in our sacred ground, and now we’re looking over our shoulders again, wondering who’s there to help us? Is there any proper security? Can we ever be safe?” Miller said.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was among those wounded in the 2019 shooting at Chabad of Poway. He became an outspoken figure against hate in the months that followed. And in December, his nephew was among those killed in a mass shooting during a Hanukkah celebration on a beach in Australia.
Goldstein, now rabbi emeritus, learned of Monday’s shooting while he was praying at his synagogue. The head of security notified him that all Jewish institutions in San Diego were on lockdown, including his synagogue, where 50 children were at preschool.
Goldstein said the shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego felt like a “horrible deja vu.”
“To me, it doesn’t make a difference if itap Jewish, Christian or Muslim. We’re all children of God, and the house of prayer is not a house of slaughter,” he said. “Thatap a safe place.”
The number of hate crimes targeting Muslims in the United States has risen in recent years. In 28 U.S. cities, anti-Muslim hate crimes were up by 18% in 2024, continuing a steady rise, according to California’s Commission on the State of Hate from 2024-2025.
Last year, CAIR fielded 8,683 complaints nationwide, according to its latest annual report — the most it had recorded in a year since it started tracking them in 1996.
And the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found social-media posts targeting Muslims are up so far this year, with a spike on Feb. 28, the day the U.S. went to war with Iran.
The FBI asked the public to send any photos or possible evidence to fbi.gov/islamiccenterofsandiegoshooting.
Staff writers Kristen Taketa, Roxana Popescu, Maura Fox and Jemma Stephenson contributed to this report.
