FBI: Couple Also Planned Bombing As Part Of San Bernardino Massacre
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The mass shooting Dec. 2 in San Bernardino carried out by Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik inside the Inland Regional center also included a bombing plot, FBI officials said Friday.
David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's LA office, said Farook took a backpack with three pipe bombs into the room where 14 killings occurred.
Farook was very deliberate, Bowdich said.
"It was placed on a table, and it was left there when he left. He left about two hours later. He disappeared about 19 minutes. And when he returned, the attack occurred," said Bowdich, who explained that the bombs were designed to detonate remotely.
But it's unclear when they were meant to go off.
He says investigators are still running down leads on an 18-minute gap in the four-hour timeline between the massacre and the police shootout that killed Farook and Malik.
"My concern is, it's a possibility that they met with someone," Bowdich said. "They went to someone's house. They went to a business. They went to a storage area. We just don't know. Until we get to know where they were in those 18 minutes, I'm uncomfortable."
In the days after the massacre, investigators sent divers into a lake at a nearby park to look for evidence but found little.
Bowdich confirmed a computer belonging to the couple is missing a hard drive.
"We have not found the hard drive," he said. " It is a great interest to us."
