Three Killed in Hate-Crime Attack at Islamic Center of San Diego; Both Suspects Found Dead in Vehicle Blocks Away

Three men were killed and both suspects died Monday in a midday shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego in the city's Clairemont neighborhood, an attack San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said is being investigated as a hate crime. The San Diego Police Department received the first 911 calls at 11:43 a.m. local time and officers were on scene at the 7000 block of Eckstrom Avenue four minutes later, where they encountered three deceased adult male victims outside the largest mosque in San Diego County. One of the dead was identified by mosque leadership as a security guard hired by the congregation following a series of threatening voicemails earlier this year.

The Islamic Center shares its campus with the Bright Horizon Academy, a pre-K through 12th grade Muslim private school that was in session at the time of the attack. Police, working alongside agents from the FBI's San Diego field office, evacuated all children and staff to a nearby church parking lot and used buses chartered from the San Diego Unified School District to reunite them with parents at a Red Cross family reunification site at Madison High School. "All children and teachers are safe," the police department said in a 1:30 p.m. update on X. "The threat has been neutralized."

The two suspects, both adult males whom police declined to identify pending notification of next of kin, fled the scene in a sedan and were found dead a few blocks away in their vehicle from what investigators initially described as self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Police recovered two semiautomatic rifles, multiple handguns and what they described as "a significant quantity" of ammunition from the suspect vehicle. Wahl said at an early-evening press conference that detectives had recovered an apparent manifesto from the sedan and were combing the suspects' social-media histories for evidence of radicalization.

Mayor Todd Gloria, who arrived on scene shortly after 2 p.m., called the attack "an unspeakable assault on a peaceful house of worship" and pledged additional San Diego Police Department patrols at all mosques and Islamic schools across the city through Eid al-Adha next month. Governor Gavin Newsom's office said the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation would assist the San Diego Police Department and the FBI. President Donald Trump posted a one-line statement on Truth Social: "Praying for San Diego." Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad called the attack "the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. mosque since the 2017 Quebec City attack that killed six worshippers."

The Islamic Center of San Diego, founded in 1980 and serving an estimated 6,000 worshippers including Somali, Sudanese, Yemeni and Bosnian-American families, has been the target of multiple bias incidents over the past two decades, including a 2009 arson attempt that destroyed a portion of the building. Federal Bureau of Investigation hate-crime data show reported anti-Muslim incidents in California rose 41 percent in 2024, the most recent year for which the FBI has published statistics. Funeral services for the three victims were tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, pending release of the bodies from the San Diego County medical examiner.