Several wounded in shooting at Youtube headquarters; police say female suspect is dead

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April 4, 2018 6:58 AM

A woman opened fire with a handgun at YouTube’s headquarters in California on Tuesday afternoon, shooting three people — one of whom was critically injured — before killing herself, the authorities said.

A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity identified the suspect as Nasim Aghdam, a woman in her 30s.

The motivation for the shooting was not made public Tuesday night. The local and state police, aided by several federal agencies, were investigating.

Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital received three patients: a man, 36, in critical condition; a woman, 32, in serious condition; and a woman, 27, in fair condition, a hospital spokesman, Brent Andrew, said at a news conference. A fourth person had injuries that were not from a gunshot, the police said.

Word of the attack in San Bruno at YouTube, which is owned by Google and is one of the world’s largest social media companies, quickly spread online through the social media feeds of employees.

Vadim Lavrusik, a YouTube employee who formerly worked for The New York Times, tweeted just before 1 p.m. that there was an “active shooter at YouTube HQ” and that he had “heard shots and saw people running while at my desk.” He was barricaded in a room with co-workers, he said, but moments later tweeted that he had been safely evacuated.

The last known address for Aghdam was in Menefee, a city in Southern California about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.

Aghdam was active on various social media outlets, including YouTube, where she had a number of channels in Farsi, Turkish and English. On her YouTube channels, she published an eclectic set of videos, including music parodies and workouts, on topics like animal cruelty and vegan cooking.

In February 2017, she recorded a video on Facebook criticizing YouTube for taking measures that decreased the number of views on her videos.

YouTube had pulled down all of her channels as of Tuesday night.

The shootings took place in a courtyard at YouTube’s offices, the police said. Those offices, like other Google facilities, maintain light security, with employees using badges to go through security gates or doors.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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