Shooters carried thousands of bullets, had a dozen pipe bombs in Calif. home

The couple suspected in Wednesday’s massacre were armed with a massive amount of ammunition and had 12 pipe bombs and thousands more bullets in their Redlands home, officials said Thursday morning as the toll from the shooting spree climbed to 21 wounded and 14 dead.

Law enforcement officials say they still do not have a motive for the violence. They described a chaotic scene both at the Inland Regional Center where the couple opened fire on a holiday luncheon of county employees, as well as on a busy San Bernardino street where officers killed both with a hail of 380 rounds.

Police said they cannot yet label the attack a terrorist incident, but that the vast amount of weaponry indicated Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, had engaged in a great deal of planning and may have been planning another attack.

“Clearly, they were equipped and they could have done another attack,” San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said. “”We intercepted them before that, obviously.”

The shooting erupted at about 11 a.m. Wednesday at a holiday luncheon for county Department of Health workers, an event that Farook was attending as a five-year employee of the department.

Guests at the event have told police alternately that Farook left angrily as some sort of dispute or that he simply disappeared from the party, but later returned with his wife and that both opened fire with AR-15 rifles.

“He was part of that, he was there early on and he left and we did have some initial information that he left under some sort of duress or that he was angry,” the chief said. “We also had someone say he just kind of disappeared.”

When he returned with his wife, Burguan said, both were wearing black tactical-style gear and equipment vests. Neither had body armor, despite earlier reports to the contrary.

The two entered the large conference room from unlocked doors on the east side of the building and opened fire, Burguan said.

“They sprayed the room with bullets,” he said. “I don’t know that there was any one person they targeted, They killed 14 people.”

The original casualty tally was 14 dead and 17 wounded, but that was increased to 21 wounded, officials said Thursday. The names and photos of those killed are expected to be released later Thursday.

Burguan said the couple fired between 65 and 75 rounds during the attack, at one point apparently striking the fire sprinkler system and setting off a deluge of water that police had to contend with when they rushed in searching for the shooters.

The shooters left behind four high-capacity .223-caliber rifle magazines, as well as a bag on a table that contained three pipe bombs that had been tied together and attached to a toy remote control car that apparently was designed as a detonator. The device did not go off, although officials are not sure why.

“It was designed that the remote control device would somehow trigger of set that device off,” Burguan said. “We don’t know if they attempted and it failed or what the story was.”

The chief said officials still do not know how the suspects learned to build such a device or whether they used an online how-to terror magazine, Inspire, to construct the bombs.

“There appears to be a degree of planning that went into this,” Burguan said. “Nobody just gets upset at a party and goes home and comes up with a scheme like this.”

The couple fled in a black Ford Expedition with Utah license plates that Farook had rented in the area three to four days earlier and that was due to be returned on Wednesday. Tips from survivors at the party who recognized Farook led police to discover he had rented the vehicle and sent them to the couple’s rented townhome in Redlands, where the two were soon spotted driving nearby.

Police gave chase and Malik, who was in the back seat of the SUV, opened fire from the rear of the vehicle on a main thoroughfare.

The vehicle came to a stop and Faroook leaped out and began firing before he was cut down by police. His wife was shot while still in the vehicle.

Burguan said police fired 380 rounds at the couple there, and that the suspects had fired 76 rounds at them, injuring two officers with bullet or shrapnel wounds to their legs that are not considered life threatening.

“That was nothing short of heroic, and I’m extremely proud of the way that they handled that,” Burguan said of the deadly enounter that killed the suspects but spared passersby.

On their bodies, police found more than 1,600 rifle and pistol rounds, Burguan said. All four of the weapons the couple had –two AR-15 rifles and two 9 mm pistols –had been purchased legally, he said. Farook had purchased the handguns himself; police have not revealed the original buyer of the rifles.

Officials originally believed there might be three shooters, and a suspect who ran from that scene was detained Wednesday. By Thursday, however, police decided hed was not involved and had simply been running for safety. He was arrested on an outstanding misdemeanor warrant, Burguan said.

After the shootout, authorities went to search the Redlands home but were delayed by fear that the house might be booby-trapped and sent in a remote-controlled robot. Once officers were inside, they found 12 pipe bombs in the garage as well as hundreds of tools that Burguan said “couild be used to construct IEDs or pipe bombs.”

They also seized 2,000 9 mm pistol rounds and more than 2,500 .223-caliber rifle rounds, he said.

Farook is a U.S. citizen who family members have said did not appear to show any signs of radicalization, and authorities cautioned Thursday that it was too early to declare the attack as a terror incident.

“We do not know the motive and we cannot rule anything out at this point,” said David Bowdich, assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.

Bowdich said Farook had traveled to Pakistan at some point last year and that he returned to the United States in July 2014 with Malik, a Pakistani woman who entered the country on a K1 visa that gave her 90 days to marry Farook before she would have to leave.

Some reports have indicated the couple arrrived in the United States from Saudia Arabia, but officials said they could not yet confirm that.

Saudi Arabia's embassy in Washington had no information either to confirm or to refute reports that Malik had lived in Saudi Arabia, that the couple had met in the kingdom or that Farook had visited to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.

A person with knowledge of the Saudi side of the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities and fluidity of the case, said that Riyadh so far had found no record of the couple’s alleged travel, but said that U.S. authorities “are in close touch with the Saudis, coordinating their priorities.”

“The Saudis have found no records so far that they’ve been through or transited the country,” the person with knowledge of the investigation said. “It’s been a day, two days. I just don’t think there's hard information now.”

The couple had a six-month-old baby they dropped off with Farook’s grandmother Wednesday morning, explaining they had a doctor’s appointment to go to.

Farook had no criminal record and “was not on the radar screen of our agency prior to yesterday,” Burguan said.

The attack, the latest in a series of mass shootings in the nation that some have pegged at the 355th so far this year, has spawned a fresh political debate over whether new gun legislation is needed, as well as a review of what the motive may have been for the incident.

President Obama convened a national security team meeting Friday morning “because he himself is determined to get to the bottom of what exactly happened,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

Speaking from the Oval Office, the president said, “At this stage, we do not know why this terrible event occurred,” but added that the investigation is now being headed by the FBI.

“It is possible this was terrorist related but we don’t know,” the president said. “It’s also possible this was workplace related.”

Bowdich said the FBI is moving quickly in some areas with the probe, noting that a team flew in from Washington to begin reconstruction and re-enactments of the crimes, and that evidence from San Bernardino already has been flown back to Washington for analysis.

But, he stressed, the agency must take the proper amount of time on the probe.

“It would be irresponsible and premature for me to call this terrorism,” Bowdich said.

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 9:41 AM with the headline "Shooters carried thousands of bullets, had a dozen pipe bombs in Calif. home."