By Mike Blake and Steve Gorman
SAN DIEGO, May 18 (Reuters) – Two teenage gunman opened fire on Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego in California, killing three men outside the mosque, one of them a security guard, before the two suspects were found dead, apparently from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, police said.
All of the children who were attending a day school that is part of the mosque complex – the largest in San Diego county – were accounted for and safe after the shooting, which erupted shortly before 12 noon PDT (1900 GMT), according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl.
Wahl said the FBI was called in to assist in the investigation of the incident, which the police chief said authorities were treating as a hate crime.
Scores of law enforcement officers called to the Islamic Center encountered the bodies of three men shot dead outside the building, including a security guard who Wahl credited with likely having helped prevent further bloodshed.
A short time later, police discovered the bodies of two teenage males, aged 17 and 19, in a vehicle in the middle of a street, dead from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, the chief said at an afternoon news conference.
He said investigators were still piecing together details of what precipitated the shooting and how the violence transpired.
Shots were also fired at a landscaper a couple of blocks away in what apparently was a separate shooting incident, though police did not say whether a connection had been ruled out. The landscaper was not injured, Wahl said.
(Reporting by Mike Blake in San Diego; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Rosalba O’Brien)
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