On Tuesday afternoon the YouTube office in California came under attack, with a woman entering the building and opening fire in the company's headquarters in San Bruno, California. The woman behind the attack was pronounced dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and it's reported that at least three people were wounded during the rampage. According to a hospital spokesman, a 36-year-old man was left in a critical condition, a 32-year-old woman in a serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in a fair condition.
The motive behind the shooting wasn't clear at the time, but the suspect and her motives have now been revealed.
It's now being reported that the shooter who died during the attack in California was an animal activist and content creator. Police have named the suspect as Nasim Aghdam.
The 39-year-old is believed to have approached the offices at lunchtime on Tuesday before she opened fire. Police claim that there is no evidence to suggest that she knew the victims.
NBC is reporting that Aghdam was angry at the video sharing platform for filtering her content. In a video posted in January last year, the vlogger claimed that YouTube had "discriminated and filtered" her content. In the video, Aghdam claims that her channel used to receive a lot of reviews, but that it was being "filtered" by the company.
She claims that YouTube had imposed an age-restriction on one of her workout videos, yet the website hadn't taken similar action against the likes of Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus.
Aghdam had published several posts on her website about a Persian culture, veganism and her hatred of Youtube and described herself as a vegan artist, bodybuilder, rapper and animal rights activist.
Taking to her website to criticise the company, she wrote: "There is no free speech in the real world & you will be suppressed for telling the truth that is not supported by the system. Videos of targeted users are filtered & merely relegated so that people can hardly see their videos!"
NBC spoke to Aghdam's family, who said that she was a "longtime YouTube user who felt she had been chated." Her father, Ismail Aghdam, said that YouTube had "stopped everything and now she has no income." He also said that his daughter "was at YouTube on Tuesday" but said he did not know how she was involved in the incident.
Aghdam was reported missing on Monday after not answering calls for two days. Police found her sleeping in her car in Mountain View, 25km from the YouTube office and reported this to her family, but did not detain her.
However, her brother claims that the family warned the police that something might happen: "She had a problem with YouTube.
"We called the cops and told them there’s a reason she went from San Diego to that, so she might do something. I didn’t know she had a gun.
"I didn’t know she’d start a fight. The cop told us they’d keep an eye on her After 12 hours the shooting happened.
"She got killed, the other three people got hurt. I did my best to avoid it but looks like the cops didn’t do their job."
The police have asked for anyone with any information to contact the San Bruno Police Department on (650) 616-7100 or by email: [email protected].
