YouTube shooter had previously visited website’s headquarters, police say
Further investigation into a shooting on YouTube’s campus in April reveals that the woman who opened fire had been on the property just a day earlier talking with workers, San Bruno, Calif., police said Thursday.
About 12:40 p.m. on April 2, Nasim Najafi Aghdam visited the campus for about 10 minutes and spoke with YouTube employees, authorities said in a news release.
“Aghdam asked for directions to the main office and was directed to the front desk, where she inquired about employment,” the statement said. She then left.
About 24 hours later, Aghdam returned.
In their release, police describe what happened next:
Aghdam entered the campus and walked into a courtyard next to one of YouTube’s buildings through a parking garage. A company employee asked her for her YouTube ID card and she pulled a 9-millimeter handgun out of her purse.
As the employee ran off, Aghdam “walked east through the courtyard and began firing indiscriminately into a crowd of employees eating lunch.
“She emptied her pistol of ammunition, reloaded another magazine, and continued firing at the building and the crowd. As she approached the entrance to the building, Aghdam turned the pistol on herself, firing it into her chest.”
Police recovered 20 shell casings from the scene and said one round remained in the gun after Aghdam was dead. Three employees were wounded, but all survived.
Aghdam’s primary motive, authorities concluded, was “displeasure with YouTube business practices. There is no evidence that her actions were intended to support any specific cause or ideology.”
For weeks before she opened fire at YouTube headquarters, the San Diego woman had made her rage at the video platform clear to anyone who would listen. She believed YouTube was intentionally suppressing her quirky collection of dance, recipe and exercise clips.
Her account had been shut down “due to multiple or severe violations” of the company’s policies, but it was unclear when that ban took effect.
In a screed posted to a website that became a subject of the investigation, Aghdam complained that YouTube employees had purposefully limited the number of people who viewed her videos, and criticized the practice of paying for “likes” and views on other social media platforms such as Instagram.
Mountain View, Calif., police made contact with Aghdam about 11 hours before the shooting, when they found her sleeping in a car with a license plate connected to a missing persons report that her family had recently filed. Officers contacted the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which described Aghdam as “at risk” because she had never gone missing before, according to a statement issued by the Mountain View Police Department.
Aghdam told police that she had left home because of family issues and was living out of her vehicle until she found a job. She did not “mention anything about YouTube, if she was upset with them, or that she had planned to harm herself or others,” according to the statement.
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
