San Bruno shooter was furious at YouTube, left warning signs
In one video, Nasim Najafi Aghdam refers to herself as a “ninja” before making a series of odd, stunted motions spliced between clips from the reality series “America’s Got Talent.” In another video, she sports a blond pixie-cut wig while mocking people who choose to eat meat.
In yet another video, the rail-thin and raven-haired Aghdam says in Farsi that she has no “specific physical or mental illness,” but says she lives “in a planet that is filled with illness, and disorder and perversion and injustice.”
Police are still trying to determine exactly what led the 39-year-old San Diego woman to bring a gun to YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno where she shot and wounded three people Tuesday before killing herself. But the woman’s fury with YouTube — which she believed was intentionally suppressing her quirky collection of dance, recipe and exercise clips — has emerged as the most likely motive, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters Wednesday morning.
As the investigation unfolded Wednesday morning, questions lingered about what, if any, chance law enforcement officials might have had to intervene before the attack. Some family members have said they told police she was angry with YouTube and might have planned on traveling to the company’s headquarters when they filed a missing person’s report earlier this week.
In a screed posted to a website that has become a subject of the investigation, Aghdam complained that YouTube employees had purposefully limited the number of people who viewed her videos, and criticized the practice of paying for “likes” and views on other social media platforms such as Instagram.
Her complaints about unfair compensation were similar to those of some YouTube creators who have publicly criticized the platform.
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to !!!!! ” she wrote.
About two weeks ago, Aghdam vented to her family that YouTube had stopped compensating her for her videos, her father told the Bay Area News Group. Ismail Aghdam said the family had called police Monday to report his daughter missing because she hadn’t answered her phone for two days. He said he told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company.
The father provided the Los Angeles Times with a family statement, saying they were in “absolute shock and can’t make sense” of the violence. “Our family would like to express their upmost regret, sorrow for what happened to innocent victims. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families,” the statement said. “We are praying for speedy recovery of the injured and ask God to bestow patience up all persons hurt in this horrific senseless act.”
A family member, who would not give her name, said Aghdam had been angry with YouTube for nearly a year because she felt the company was keeping her from spreading a message promoting a vegan lifestyle. Relatives called police to warn them about her frustrations.
Aghdam entered the country as a refugee roughly two decades ago. In one of her videos, Aghdam said she was born in Urmia, Iran — where she and other Baha’i face discrimination — and that her family had spent a year and a half in Turkey.
Mountain View police made contact with Aghdam about 1:40 a.m. Tuesday, roughly 12 hours before the shooting, when they found her sleeping in a car with a license plate connected to the missing persons report. Officers contacted the San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department, which described Aghdam as “at risk” because she had never gone missing before, according to a statement issued by the Mountain View Police Department.
Aghdam told police she had left home due to family issues and was living out of her vehicle until she found a job. She did not “mention anything about YouTube, if she was upset with them, or that she had planned to harm herself or others,” according to the statement.