Calif. death ride
Killer YouTube gal drove 500 miles
THE VEGAN fitness buff who wounded three people before killing herself at YouTube’s headquarters was angry at the video website for shutting down her channel, police said Wednesday.
Nasim Aghdam’s rage at the tech giant drove her to shoot up its California office Tuesday, authorities said.
“I am being discriminated. I am being filtered on YouTube,” the Iranian-born woman said in one of the videos that made her a social media star in her homeland.
Police found the 39-year-old woman sleeping in her car just a few hours before the rampage.
Aghdam (photo) never mentioned YouTube in the 20-minute interview with officers.
Instead, she calmly told the police that she was having family problems and had left her home.
“It was a very normal conversation. There was nothing in her behavior that suggested anything unusual,” said Mountain View Police Chief Max Bosel.
Aghdam, after speaking with the cops, went to a gun range to practice shooting with her 9-mm. Smith & Wesson handgun.
Then she headed for YouTube’s Silicon Valley campus and shot three employees in an open-air plaza before turning the gun on herself.
One of the three victims, a man in his 30s, remained hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday.
The two others were released Tuesday night.
“We know that she was upset with YouTube ... that’s the motivation,” San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said.
“Whether that rises to the level of terrorism hopefully will be determined in the next couple of weeks.”
Aghdam’s father said he warned the police that his daughter was furious at the tech giant and might head to its headquarters to exact revenge.
But police pushed back against that claim, saying they spoke with relatives after finding Aghdam in her car but none mentioned “potential acts of violence.”
Aghdam used her YouTube channel to rail against injustice, disease and animal cruelty.
“I think I am doing a great job,” she wrote in Persian on her Instagram account.
“I have never fallen in love and have never got married. I have no physical and psychological diseases. But I live on a planet that is full of injustice and diseases.”