Two teenagers who fatally shot three people during an attack on a mosque in San Diego, California, were “radicalized” online, authorities said during a May 19 news conference in which they credited those who were slain in the incident for putting themselves in harm’s way to save others.

Authorities disclosed that the ‌17- and 18-year-old assailants, who took their own lives shortly after the May 18 shooting, were believed to have met online and were radicalized by hate-related ideology on the internet.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily said the teens “didn’t discriminate on who they hated.” He added, “What I can say is they definitely had a broad hatred towards a lot of folks.”

Remily said one of the gunmen left behind a manifesto, but he declined to characterize it in detail.

Security guard Amin Abdullah, 51, also known to friends as Brian Climax, immediately ​recognized the two youths as a threat and opened fire on them as they ran past him outside the mosque, according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. The ⁠suspects then paused to return fire, Wahl said.

Abdullah wound up fatally shot in the parking lot, along with two other men who distracted the suspects after they stormed into the building, drawing their attention through a window, thus ​luring the two teens back outside, Wahl said.

The two other victims, mosque elder Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Uber driver Nadir Awad, 57, a neighbor whose wife worked as a teacher at the school there, were cornered and fatally shot in the parking lot by the gunmen when they re-emerged.

In the midst of the confrontation, it was Abdullah who transmitted the radio call that activated a security lockdown, which Wahl said also prevented further bloodshed there.

The gunfight and the security alert gave others in the building time to take shelter behind locked doors, Wahl said, while Kaziha and Awad coaxed the suspects out of the building. Kaziha was also the first person to call 911 before he was shot, police said.

A video monitor shows images of Mansour Kaziha, security guard Amin Abdullah, also known to friends as Brian Climax, and Nadir Awad, who were killed during a shooting attack at the Islamic Centre of San Diego, during a news conference at police headquarters in San Diego, Calif., on May 19, 2026. (Arafat Barbakh/Reuters)

Minutes before officers from around California’s second-most-populous city converged ​on the mosque, the two suspects fled by car. They were found dead in their vehicle a short time later, several blocks away, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.

Wahl singled out Abdullah for special praise of his “heroic ​action,” adding that at first, “I had no idea how heroic those actions were.”

A sheriff's deputy stages at the scene of a shooting outside the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18, 2026. (Gregory Bull/AP Photo)

“His actions, without a doubt, delayed, distracted, and ultimately deterred those two individuals from gaining access to the greater areas of the mosque where as many as 140 kids were within ‌15 feet of ⁠these suspects,” Wahl said.

Firearms Recovered

“I would say we’re still too early in the investigation to say that the Islamic Center of San Diego was the specific target,” Remily said. “We are assessing and analyzing all the evidence.”

People stand behind police tape at the scene of a shooting outside the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18, 2026. (Gregory Bull/AP Photo)

The Islamic Center of San Diego, a mosque in the Clairemont neighborhood, also houses a school. It serves a congregation of more than 5,000 and opened its doors in 1989.

“We have never ever expected such things to happen at the Islamic Center of San Diego,” Imam Taha Hassane, the center’s director, said during Tuesday’s news conference. “He sacrificed his life to stop them from getting inside the classrooms,” she said of Abdullah.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report