YouTube Shooter's Social Media, Website Scrubbed From Internet
SAN BRUNO (CBS SF) -- The woman identified as the suspect in Tuesday's shooting at the San Bruno headquarters of YouTube was an avid user of the social media platform who maintained channels in English, Farsi and Turkish -- all of which have been taken down in the last 24 hours.
Nasim Najafi Aghdam's social profiles on Facebook and Instagram have also been removed.
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Before her suicide, Aghdam's YouTube videos garnered hundreds of thousands of views, according to screenshots posted on the website she apparently maintained for more than 10 years at nasimesabz.com. That site, which was hosted on a Tucows Domains Inc. server, was also taken down just before noon Wednesday.
Her topics of choice included working out, animal cruelty, veganism and parodies of celebrity music videos, but seems to have had a grudge against the platform that made it possible for her to publish those videos.
"Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!" Aghdam wrote immediately after a paragraph featuring a quote from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
She goes on to accuse YouTube of censorship, claiming that her revenue and viewership had gone into steep decline due to decisions made by "new close-minded youtube employees."
A picture apparently depicting a sharp object lodged in a vehicle's tire was accompanied by text claiming that she had been targeted by individuals seeking to harm or kill her because of her views about animal cruelty.
Aghdam, 39, shot a man and two women -- all of whom survived -- at YouTube's headquarters at 901 Cherry Ave. in San Bruno around 12:45 p.m. Tuesday before apparently taking her own life with a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun registered to her, according to police.
Despite early speculation that the shooting may have been some sort of domestic violence incident targeting a romantic partner, police have said she has no apparent connection to the victims.
Aghdam was reported missing by her family in San Diego County and was considered at risk. She was found sleeping in her car by Mountain View police earlier Tuesday, but they described her as "calm and cooperative" and said she told them she was in the area looking for work.
She never mentioned YouTube or that she was upset, and they did not arrest her since there was no obvious reason to believe she was a danger to herself or others.
Mountain View police talked by phone with Aghdam's father and brother to notify them that she had been found, and the family confirmed there had been issues at home, but did not mention any potential threat or that she may have been in possession of any weapons.
Aghdam's father called back about an hour later to tell police that Aghdam had "made a series of vegan videos for her channel on YouTube and that the company had recently done something to her videos that had caused her to become upset," Mountain View police said in a statement this morning.
"He did not seem concerned that she was in the area, and wanted to simply let us know that may have been a reason for her move up here," police said.
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