Marquez ‘emotionally immature’

SAN BERNARDINO GUN BUYER ‘AN UNLIKELY TERRORIST’

SAN BERNARDINO: The owner of a California bar that employed the man believed to have bought the guns used in the Dec 2 fatal mass shooting in San Bernardino liked to read comic books and seemed an unlikely character in a terror plot.

Jerry Morgan, owner of Morgan’s Tavern in Riverside, California, said Enrique Marquez, 25, was an “emotionally immature” man who liked to read comic books, but was not terrorist material.

Mr Marquez, whom The New York Times said purchased two assault rifles for the husband and wife shooters in San Bernardino, worked for Mr Morgan for the last three years. He checked IDs at the door and asked people to leave if they appeared too intoxicated, Mr Morgan said.

“He was a goody goody two shoes type kid,” said Mr Morgan, 58. “If anybody was talking about sleeper cells, if I had any suspicion he was a weirdo, I would have fired him.” Mr Marquez, according to the Times, talked with other bar patrons about sleeper terrorist cells but also of something that was going “to be big”.

“He would say stuff like, ‘There’s so much going on. There’s so many sleeper cells, people just waiting. When it happens, it’s going to be big. Watch’,” said Morgan’s patron Nick Rodriguez.

“We took it as a joke. When you look at the kid and talk to him, no one would take him seriously about that.” But Mr Morgan said this did not fit what he knew of Mr Marquez, whose worst crime when he worked at the bar was throwing up once all over the stock room.

“He fit my purposes,” Mr Morgan said. “He was a non-confrontational person.”

Mr Marquez, who authorities say was a friend of the husband and wife who were the alleged shooters in the rampage that left 14 dead, knew husband Syed Farook from childhood, according to the Times. They grew up tinkering with cars together. Mr Marquez married the sister of Farook’s sister-in-law, although he told companions it was a sham marriage that he went through for immigration purposes, the Times reported. The wife was Russian-born.

Mr Marquez is still being questioned and has waived his right to remain silent. It is unclear with what, if anything, he will be charged.