Freed just before rampage - because she seemed OK
California cops had their eyes on the YouTube shooter hours before her attack — and were warned she had a score to settle with the company — but let her go because she didn’t seem violent.
Mountain View police made the stunning admission a day after deranged vlogger Nasim Aghdam wounded three people at the video giant’s headquarters then killed herself on Tuesday, enraged over the perceived censorship of her bizarre animal-rights clips and how little she earned for her videos.
The San Diego woman’s family — immigrants from Iran and members of the persecuted Baha’i faith who had left their homeland decades ago, according to one of Aghdam’s videos — reported her missing and “at risk” when she vanished over the weekend, just a few days shy of her 39th birthday.
Early Tuesday morning, Aghdam was finally spotted sleeping in her car in Mountain View — almost 500 miles north of where she lived and a little more than 30 miles south of YouTube headquarters. Cops chatted with her before calling her home to say she was safe, police said.
“During our contact with her, she was asked a series of questions including, but not limited to, if she was a danger to herself or others,” the Mountain View Police Department wrote on Facebook Wednesday.
“At no point during our roughly 20 minute interaction with her did she mention anything about YouTube, if she was upset with them, or that she had planned to harm herself or others. Throughout our entire interaction with her, she was calm and cooperative.” But loved ones say they phoned back when they realized there was only one reason for her to be in the Silicon Valley hub: She “hated” YouTube.
“I Googled ‘Mountain View’ and it was close to YouTube headquarters, and she had a problem with YouTube,” her brother, who didn’t give his name, told KGTV. “So I called that cop again and told him there’s a reason she went all the way from San Diego to there, so she might do something.”
Mountain View police say the brother didn’t specifically mention Aghdam might be violent, however — so they didn’t act.
“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,” the police department wrote.
“Once again, at no point did her father or brother mention anything about potential acts of violence or a possibility of Aghdam lashing out as a result of her issues with her videos. They remained calm throughout this second phone call.”
The family also didn’t mention — and said they didn’t know — that Aghdam owned a 9mm semiautomatic Smith & Wesson handgun.
Later that morning, she drove to the Jackson Arms Shooting Range in South San Francisco, police say.
She then drove to nearby San Bruno, where she parked at a garage adjacent to YouTube’s headquarters, gained entry to the tech company’s headquarters, and started firing.
When the 911 calls started flooding into the San Bruno Police Department, officers there had never heard the name Nasim Aghdam.
“We did not have any information and were not familiar with what was passed on to any other agency,” San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters Wednesday.
“This was our first encounter and first awareness of this subject after we arrived on scene.”
He confirmed that she didn’t appear to have had any direct relationship to her victims, and seems to have been motivated by anger at the “policies and practices of YouTube.”
Meanwhile, ATF agents raided Aghdam’s apartment and her family’s house on Wednesday. Agents spent an hour inside her unit and emerged with several brown paper bags and a plastic bin.
Two of her victims were released from the hospital Wednesday, while a third — a 36-year-old man — remained in serious condition, officials said.