Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Shooting suspect ‘angry at YouTube’
A WOMAN opened fire with a handgun in a courtyard at YouTube headquarters, injuring three people before shooting herself dead.
Employees huddled inside, calling police, as officers and federal agents swarmed the company’s suburban campus sandwiched between two interstate freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno.
YouTube employee Dianna Arnspiger said she was on the building’s second floor when she heard gunshots, ran to a window and saw the suspect on a patio outside using a “huge pistol”.
“It was a woman and she was firing her gun. And I just said, ‘Shooter,’ and everybody started running,” Ms Arnspiger said.
She and others hid in a conference room for an hour while another employee repeatedly called police for updates. “It was terrifying,” she said. Two law enforcement officials later identified the suspect as Nasim Aghdam, of Southern California, and said the shooting was being investigated as a domestic dispute. Aghdam was angry at YouTube because it had stopped paying her for videos she posted on the platform, her father told the Bay Area News Group.
People who post on YouTube can receive money from advertisements that accompany their videos, but the company “de-monetises” some channels for reasons including inappropriate material or having fewer than 1,000 subscribers.
YouTube had “stopped everything”, and “she was angry”, Ismail Aghdam said. Mr Aghdam said he reported his daughter missing on Monday after she did not answer her phone for two days.
A 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman was in fair condition, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital said.
Witnesses described terror before officers arrived and discovered a victim near a front door and then found the suspect several minutes later with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said. He said two additional gunshot victims were found at an adjacent business minutes later.
Google, which owns the world’s biggest online video website, said the company’s security team worked with authorities to evacuate buildings and was doing whatever it could support the victims and their families.