Mountain View police found Nasim Aghdam sleeping in car hours before YouTube shooting
It’s the website investigators are looking at as they try to piece together the motive of a woman — identified as Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39 — who stormed onto YouTube’s sprawling San Bruno, Calif., campus with a 9-millimeter handgun and opened fire in
The 39-year-old woman who authorities say opened fire at YouTube’s San Bruno, Calif., headquarters, wounding three people before killing herself, had recently been reported missing by her family in Southern California.
Mountain View police said they spotted the woman, who goes by Nasim Aghdam, asleep in a car in a city parking lot early Tuesday morning, hours before the shooting, and notified her family.
“Our officers made contact with the woman after the license plate of her vehicle matched that of a missing person out of Southern California,” Katie Nelson, a spokeswoman for the department, said via email. “The woman confirmed her identity to us and answered subsequent questions.”
Nelson said the woman did not indicate that she was a threat to herself or to others during her contact with police.
Investigators initially believed the shooting was a domestic incident, with the shooter targeting someone who worked on the YouTube campus. But San Bruno police released a statement late Tuesday saying there’s “no evidence that the shooter knew the victims of this shooting or that individuals were specifically targeted.”
One law enforcement source said the investigation is now looking into a website in which someone with a name similar to Aghdam’s complains about YouTube stifling traffic and suppressing videos.
About two weeks ago, Aghdam vented to her family that YouTube stopped compensating her for her videos, her father told the Bay Area News Group. He said the family had called police to report her missing Monday because she hadn’t answered her phone for two days.
He said he had told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company.
alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @AleneTchek
UPDATES:
12:45 p.m.: This article was updated with additional information from Mountain View police.
10:45 p.m.: This article was updated with new information from San Bruno police.
This article was originally published at 10:35 p.m.
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