San Bernardino shooters practiced at gun range, FBI says
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - The married couple responsible for the San Bernardino shooting participated in target practice, including once within days of the attack that killed 14 people, the FBI announced Monday.
David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, said at a news conference Monday that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, participated in target practice at ranges within the Los Angeles area.
Farook signed in at Riverside Magnum Gun Range target practice with his AR-15, two days before the San Bernardino massacre. Mike McGee says Farook approached him at the range with a question.
CBS News' Carter Evans spoke with McGee who said when he met Farook, nothing about him stuck out. Farook had asked McGee a question when his gun began smoking.
McGee said the question, "Tells me that it was a new rifle. He was not familiar with it."
John Galletta is an instructor at the range. He said he had seen Farook at the range at least twice.
"It is devastating to people to know that this is where he might have prepared for those last days," Galletta said.
The couple used two altered AR-15 semiautomatic weapons in the attack, as well as two pistols, officials have said previously. They carried extra ammunition on the military-style tactical fatigues they were wearing. Witnesses told officers that the two shooters were wearing ski-type masks and vests.
Bowdich said they also found 19 pipes in the couple's home in Redlands, California, that could be turned into bombs with all the right components.
A federal law enforcement source told CBS News investigative correspondent Pat Milton that Enrique Marquez, who purchased the two assault rifles used in the attacks, is being questioned by the FBI today. The source said that Marquez is apparently providing information. He has not been arrested and has not been charged.
The FBI could not interviewed Marquez until today because he was being evaluated at a mental health facility where he had checked himself in after the shooting.
The FBI said Monday said the couple were radicalized and had been "for some time," although officials don't know when or whether anyone else radicalized them.
Although Farook had been living together in the U.S. for some time, they arrived here as a couple in July of 2014.
FBI Director James Comey said after the shooting that officials are combing through a "very large volume of electronic evidence" indicating that the pair tried to hide from law enforcement.
Chaz Harrison told CBS News he met Farook in college in 2008, and that he was talkative. However, he was not very open about his wife, describing Farook as very "secretive" and someone "didn't want to reveal too much about his wife."
"One of the first things I said, 'Hey you got a picture?' He didn't have any pictures," Harrison said. "He said that she was very uncomfortable. Everyone looked at her -- they stared her because of the way she dressed.
"He was very secretive about his wife," Harrison added. "He didn't want to reveal much about his wife. I could see he wasn't really comfortable talking about it but what he did tell me, she was a pharmacist in her country. He also told me that, she didn't want to be here neither."
Just before the shooting, Malik pledged her allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an online posting. However her radicalization is thus far a public mystery. Those who knew her called Tashfeen Malik a "modern girl" who became deeply religious, never an extremist.
Few details have emerged about Malik's life in Pakistan, where she lived from 2007 to 2014 before heading to the United States on a fiancee visa. Malik studied pharmacy at the Bahauddin Zakariya University in the central city of Multan, where she got a degree in 2013.
She also took classes at the Multan branch of Al-Huda International Seminary, a women-only madrassa with branches across Pakistan and in the U.S. and Canada. The school has no known links to extremists, and in Pakistan it is popular among upper-middle class and urban women.
CBS News' Carter Evans reports that both Farook and Malik were generally quiet students and both became deeply religious. And on Sunday, CBS News heard from Farook's father at his Southern California home.
The elder Syed Farook told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, "My son said he shared (ISIS leader Abu Bakr) Al Baghdadi's ideology, and supported the creation of the Islamic State. He also was obsessed with Israel."
The official investigation into Farook and Malik hit a snag when five years' worth of telephone records for the married couple lapsed just four days earlier when the National Security Agency's controversial mass surveillance program was formally shut down.
Under a court order, those historical calling records at the NSA are now off-limits to agents running the FBI terrorism investigation even with a warrant.
However, a U.S. official tells CBS News that investigators will have access to phone records eventually, but the information is in possession of the phone companies, not the U.S. government.
Under the new law, phone providers are required to keep those records and to provide them when lawfully asked. The way it is set up to work is that the FBI would ask the NSA and the NSA would query the phone companies involved for its records.
It adds a layer of lawyers and bureaucracy to the process. This came as a result of the Edward Snowden revelations.
Also on Monday, a custody hearing was held but no long-term decisions were made on the status of the 6-month-old daughter of the couple.
Saira Khan, the older sister Farook, is seeking to adopt the child.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose attorney is representing Khan, said in a statement Monday that the child remains in the custody of San Bernardino County Child Protective Services and another hearing has been scheduled for next month.
CAIR says it is seeking to have the child placed with a Muslim foster family and to be reunited with relatives as soon as possible.
The county has declined comment on the child's status.
The couple left the girl with family members saying they were headed to a doctor's appointment before Wednesday's shooting at a holiday party.