On April 3, 2018, at 12:46 p.m. PDT, a shooting occurred at the headquarters of the video-sharing website YouTube in San Bruno, California. The shooter was identified as 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam, who entered through an exterior parking garage, approached an outdoor patio, and opened fire with a Smith & Wesson9 mmsemi-automatic pistol. Aghdam wounded three people, one of them critically, before killing herself.
Shooting
At 12:46 p.m., San Bruno police received reports of a shooter at the YouTube headquarters. Aghdam's weapon had a capacity of 10 rounds, and she emptied one magazine before reloading. Helicopter footage later showed a large hole and broken glass in the building's lobby doors. Aghdam took her own life, two days before her 39th birthday. A coroner's report says she died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the heart; it found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in her system.
Perpetrator
Background
The perpetrator was identified by police as Nasim Najafi Aghdam, YouTube Personality Nasim a vegan activist and aspiring fitness personality. She was born in Urmia, Iran, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1996. She was a registered member of the Baháʼí Faith and described how veganism was aligned with her religion, but was critical of Middle Eastern cultural practices and Muslims and Baháʼís who ate animals. She was 38 years old and lived with her grandmother in Riverside County, California. She posted content on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and YouTube in Persian, Azerbaijani, English and Turkish. Her content went viral on Iranian social media and drew widespread attention. She had previously protested with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals against the use of pigs in United States Marine Corps training procedures for victims of trauma. Nasim Aghdam purchased and registered a 9 mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol from a San Diego gun dealer on January 16, 2018. On March 31, 2018, Aghdam's family reported to the police that Nasim Aghdam was missing. According to her father, she "hated" YouTube, and the family was worried she might be traveling to the company's offices. The morning before the shooting, police officers contacted Aghdam when they found her sleeping in her car in a Walmartparking lot in Mountain View, south of YouTube's headquarters. The officers did not identify her as a threat. It is not clear if these police officers were aware of the concerns of Aghdam's father. Aghdam visited a shooting rangethe day before the shooting.
Motive
Police believe Aghdam was motivated by her displeasure at the policies of the YouTube channels that she maintained. She complained about YouTube on her website, writing that "Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!" and that the company had demonetized most of her videos. Ismail Aghdam, her father, of Riverside County, said that his daughter was a "vegan activist and animal lover" who told him that YouTube had been censoring her videos and stopped paying her for her content. “She was angry,” he said. According to the San Jose Mercury-News:
Aghdam was prolific on social media, posting videos and photos on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Her YouTube channel included strange workout video clips, graphic animal abuse videos and vegan cooking tutorials.
Victims
and Stanford University Medical Center treated the victims. Four injuries were reported. The victims were a 36-year-old man in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman in fair condition, and a 27-year-old woman in stable condition. Another person injured her ankle while fleeing the building.
