San Diego, CA
Teacher’s assistant at San Diego mosque recalls students’ bravery as gunmen banged on doors
SAN DIEGO — Like schools across the U.S., the Islamic Center of San Diego had sought to prepare its students for the possibility that a gunman could breach its walls.
When two armed teenagers stormed the mosque Monday — and those “active shooter” drills were put to the test — the young students in one classroom did exactly as they had practiced and “went straight to business,” their teacher’s assistant told NBC News.
“If they didn’t, then this could have been a different outcome,” said the assistant, Imani, who teaches second and third graders and asked to go by her first name.
Authorities have said the three people gunned down at the mosque, described on its website as San Diego County’s largest, were all outside. No one who was inside the center at the time — including dozens of students attending school — was injured, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl has said.
One of the victims, security guard Amin Abdullah, fired at the teens when they sought to enter the mosque. He then used his radio to trigger a lockdown protocol, Wahl told reporters.
An imam at the mosque, Taha Hassane, said the center practices the lockdown drills multiple times every school year. Abdullah, he said, had been with the mosque for several years and knew about the system, which notifies teachers in their classrooms about active shooters.
The gunmen returned fire, as did Abdullah, who was killed in the gunfight, Wahl said.
Wahl said Abdullah “delayed, distracted and ultimately deterred” the shooters from gaining access to the areas of the mosque where there were as many as 140 kids.
As soon as Imani heard the gunfire, she recalled, she looked at a colleague, and they immediately knew what was happening.
“We told the kids this is not a shooting drill,” she said. “There is an active shooter, and let’s go.”
The students did as they had done in practice drills, she said, filing into a corner of the classroom, staying low to avoid windows and making sure the doors were shut and locked.
The students remained silent, even as they could hear the shooters banging on doors and trying to open them, she said.
“We are just so proud of them and their bravery,” Imani said, adding: “They held it together.”
Some of the security video from inside the mosque showed the gunmen moving from room to room, Wahl said, but those areas were empty. The shooters ultimately found two men — Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad — in the parking lot outside and fatally shot them, Wahl said.
Each of those victims is “worth more than 1,000 men,” Imani said. “They are the reason all 140 of us made it out alive.”
Authorities said the gunmen, identified as Caleb Vazquez, 18, and Cain Clark, 17, are believed to have taken their own lives after they fled from the mosque.
Authorities investigating their motives are trying to authenticate a 75-page document that they may have written and posted online, law enforcement officials have said.
The material espouses anti-Islamic, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ views, and it refers to accelerationism, a white supremacist ideology that promotes violence to speed the formation of a white ethnostate.
“These subjects did not discriminate on who they hated,” an FBI official, Mark Remily, told reporters Tuesday.
Morgan Chesky reported from San Diego and Tim Stelloh from Alameda, California.
SeaWorld San Diego wants to change the bad reputation of sharks thanks to movies like “Jaws,” “The Meg” and “Sharknado” from apex predators to endangered species with a refreshed aquarium exhibit at the marine life park.
Shark Encounter reopens on Friday, May 22 at SeaWorld San Diego after an eight-month refurbishment that added fresh paint, redressed rockwork, new props, digital screens and projection scenes to the exhibit. SeaWorld hosted a media preview of Shark Encounter on Tuesday, May 19.
ALSO SEE: First look at Nate Bargatze’s $350 million Nateland theme park
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The entrance to the Shark Encounter exhibits where visitors can view sharks from above at Sea World on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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The entrance to the Shark Encounter exhibits where visitors can view sharks from above at Sea World on Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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The 280,000-gallon aquarium with three pools and a signature walk-through tunnel features about 40 sharks representing 10 species.
The updated storyline in the SeaWorld exhibit paints sharks as personable, friendly, calm and sensitive fish that just happen to be highly evolved hunters at the top of the food chain.
The latest refurbishment marks the first major update to Shark Encounter since the exhibit opened in 1992.
The old exhibit featured scary music and spooky lighting intended to reinforce the public’s fear of sharks, according to SeaWorld Aquarist Nathan Merghart.
“Back when the original exhibit opened, there was still a lot of confusion around sharks and not a lot was known about them,” Merghart said during a tour of Shark Encounter. “A lot more information has come out about these animals. They’re not these big, giant, terrifying, scary things that everybody used to think they were.”
The new exhibit features a summer beach town vibe with surfing props, water safety signage and plenty of information designed to lighten the stigma about sharks, according to Merghart.
“These guys have a bad reputation and get a very bad rap for lots of things,” Merghart said during a tour. “They can be scary and they do have big teeth, but they’re not really as problematic as a lot of people think.”
Sharks are under attack with some species in danger of disappearing, according to an eight-minute video playing on a loop at the end of the exhibit.
More than 100 million sharks are killed a year due to overfishing, water pollution, climate change and loss of habitat, according to the video.
Gunshots captured on Ring camera near San Diego shooting
A San Diego homeowner shared Ring camera footage capturing the sound of apparent gunshots near an Islamic center where three people were killed.
As gunshots erupted through San Diego’s Clairemont neighborhood, about 10 miles north of the city’s downtown area, a man walking his child in a stroller dove for cover in harrowing security footage which also captured the sound of the shots.
José Rodriguez was out on a walk with his son when gunshots echoed through the neighborhood after two teenage suspects opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, May 18, sending him running towards his yard for cover and tipping the stroller in the process. He quickly manages to get the stroller back up and darts off-screen. A white SUV, believed to be the one the suspects were driving, can be seen swerving by. About eight shots are heard in the video.
Rodriguez told USA TODAY he was able to maintain eyesight of the vehicle until it stopped a short distance down and called 911 to help authorities identify where the suspects and vehicle was.
Rodriguez and his son were not injured during the incident.
Watch the video at the top of this story. Viewer discretion is advised.
Three killed in shooting
The San Diego Police Department, at around 11:43 a.m. local time on May 18, received reports of an active shooter at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County, according to its website. Minutes later, responding officers discovered three men dead, including a security guard, outside the mosque.
During a news conference, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the security officer likely helped prevent further bloodshed.
The two suspects, ages 17 and 18, meanwhile were later found dead in a vehicle nearby. They died from what appeared to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
‘Hate rhetoric’ involved
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl, during a news conference, said the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.
“At this point, there was definitely hate rhetoric that was involved,” he said at the late afternoon news conference. “I’ll leave it at that for now.”
Wahl later noted that there had been no specific threat made against the Islamic Center of San Diego or any other facilities. He added that police were aware of “generalized hate rhetoric” in the case and that the mother of one of the suspects found a note he left behind but declined to provide additional details.
The Islamic center has about 5,000 members in its congregation, according to CBS 8 San Diego. The center houses the Bright Horizon Academy, a school providing Islamic education, Reuters reported.
Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@usatodayco.com and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.
San Diego, CA
Security guard’s ‘heroic’ actions saved others in San Diego mosque attack, officials say
SAN DIEGO — The Islamic Center of San Diego is mourning three people killed in Monday’s attack, including a security guard praised by police for his actions.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the security guard who was inside the mosque was “able to minimize the situation to the front area of the mosque” and saved lives.
“His actions were heroic,” he said.
His name has not been released, but the mosque honored him in a Facebook post, calling him a “a courageous man who put himself on the line of the safety of others, who even in his last moments did not stop protecting our community”
The security guard had worked there for several years.
“He wanted to defend the innocent so he decided to become a security guard,” a family friend, Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq, told the Associated Press.
The Islamic Center of San Diego is one of the largest mosques in San Diego and attracts worshippers from across the region. Inside are classrooms, an office, praying halls, a multipurpose room, a library, a kitchen, and a grocery store where kids frequently buy snacks after school.
The man who ran the grocery store and the husband of one of the school’s teachers were also killed, according to mosque members. Authorities have not yet identified them by name.
Suzan Hamideh was trying to come to terms with what unfolded at the mosque she’d been visiting for decades. Right now, she said, she’s angry — at the loss of life, by the fact that the children will live with this trauma for the rest of their lives, and by what she called the rampant misunderstanding of the Muslim religion that she suspects led to the violence.
“Why should this be happening to begin with? And then in schools and places of worship. There is so much hatred,” she said. “It needs to change, and it starts with educating people about Islam. It’s a religion of love and peace.”
Hamideh said she’d heard from those inside that, as soon as the shooters entered the house of worship, the security guard radioed to the rest of the staff that there was an active shooter.
This gave teachers a chance to lock their classrooms, which house students in kindergarten through third grade, she said.
Odai Shanah, 9, was sitting inside his third-grade class at the Islamic Center of San Diego when the shooting started.
He wasn’t sure what the sound was at first. He assumed it was a tree branch snapping in the wind and hitting the ground.
He hid in the classroom closet with the rest of his class until the SWAT team arrived, kicking down the door and instructing the students to file out with their hands up.
The students walked out past the bodies of those killed, his family said.
“We saw a bunch of bad stuff,” Odai said. “I felt scared. My legs were shaking.”
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