Who Was Nasim Aghdam? YouTube Shooter Injured 3 Before Killing Self

The YouTube shooter, who wounded three people inside the company’s San Bruno, California, headquarters Tuesday before killing herself, was identified as Nasim Aghdam.

Aghdam was a YouTuber who apparently held a grudge against the self-broadcasting platform. She ranted about YouTube in many of the videos she posted online, Heavy reported.

In initial reports, her age was mentioned as between 35 and 40 years old.

CBS Los Angeles reporter Tina Patel spoke to Aghdam’s father who said that his daughter had been missing for the past few days and they had filed a missing person’s report with the police.

One of the Mountain View police officers found her asleep in her vehicle Tuesday morning. After running a trace on her license plate, they found that it matched the one provided on her missing person’s file. As soon as her identity was confirmed, her family was notified.

Aghdam also allegedly told the police at the time that she was angry with YouTube. It is not yet clear when she hatched the plan of carrying out a mass shooting at the company’s headquarters.

She reportedly drove down from Riverside County, southern California, to San Bruno in order to carry out the shooting. One of the employees, who was shot and was admitted to the hospital in a critical condition, seemed to be the intended target, according to sources.

“This woman came to the YouTube workplace with a specific target in mind; someone she knew, someone with whom she wanted to settle a grievance. She shot that person, she may have shot a second person who was with him, intentionally. We’re not sure about the third person,” MSNBC reporter Pete Williams said.

YouTube employee Zack Vorhies, who witnessed the incident, said a verbal argument unfolded between a male victim and the female shooter before the actual shooting began.

“I was at my desk, working, when the fire alarm went off … we exited the back of the building. … I had my electric skateboard. I put the skateboard on the ground and I started going down the hill toward the courtyard. I heard some yelling going on and when I arrived near the courtyard, I heard somebody yelling, ‘Do you want to shoot me?’ I looked to my left, which was his right, and I saw somebody lying on their back on the concrete with what appeared to be a gunshot wound through the stomach. And I say that because there was a red splotch on his shirt, and he wasn’t moving,” Vorhies explained.

Some of the news outlets reported that the suspect’s intended target was her boyfriend and that the incident was influenced by domestic violence situation. Any terror-related threat was ruled out. However, the police have not confirmed the suspect’s motive behind the shooting.

CNN also came under fire on social media for assuming that the shooting was the result of a love triangle gone wrong. Twitter users bashed CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz’s sexist coverage of the shooting just because the shooter is a woman.

The police were alerted about the shooting at 12:46 p.m. local time (3:46 p.m. EDT). According to San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini, officers arrived at the scene two minutes later and “immediately began a search for a possible shooter or suspect.”

The police found the female suspect down “with a gunshot wound to her chest.” A handgun was found near the woman’s body.