The female shooter in this week’s deadly San Bernardino, Calif., attack posted a pledge of allegiance to an Islamic State leader as the attack was happening, according to investigators.
Tashfeen Malik made the post, according to one U.S. official, under a different name pledging allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook. The officials did not say how they knew she was the one who made the post, however.
Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, were killed in a shootout with police after an attack at an office party that left 14 people dead and 21 wounded.
“This is looking more and more like self-radicalization,” one official said, though the officials have declined to say if the Islamic State directed or ordered the attack.
Officials have also declined to label the shooting as a terror attack, and have said radicalization seemed to be part of the reason, but that workplace tensions may have been another.
“It would be irresponsible and premature for me to call this terrorism,” FBI official David Bowdich said Thursday. “The FBI defines terrorism very specifically, and that is the big question for us: What is the motivation for this?”
(h/t CNN)
