ABOVE: Watch a clip from the police bodycam footage with Nasim Aghdam.
In body-camera footage released Friday, the now-infamous YouTube shooter Nasim Aghdam gave no hint to Mountain View police of the chilling attack she was about to unleash at the online video giant’s San Bruno campus.
Instead, the 38-year-old woman — whom police found sleeping in her 2006 Pontiac just hours before the shooting — repeatedly answered “no” and shook her head when asked by officers whether she wanted to kill herself or anyone else.
Police say the 30-minute video bolsters their explanation as to why they did not detain Aghdam during their April 3 encounter after spotting her that morning in the parking lot of the San Antonio Shopping Center.
They maintain that nothing from their exchange with Aghdam, or subsequent phone calls with family members who had reported her missing, foreshadowed any violent intent stemming from a grudge she had against YouTube. Aghdam believed YouTube had censored some graphic anti-animal cruelty videos she had posted and had stopped selling ads for her workout videos.
“A review of the incident revealed that our officers followed proper procedure and protocol. In this case, they checked on the welfare of a person who, at the time, was reported missing but whose actions, demeanor, and answers did not present any information which would cause us to believe she would be a threat to herself or others,” Mountain View Police Chief Max Bosel said in a news release accompanying the video.
CLICK HERE if you are having trouble viewing the video on your mobile device.
Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, declined to comment on the video when reached by phone at his home in Menifee, a suburban community in Riverside County where the shooter had lived and produced many of her videos. But in the wake of the shooting, family members criticized Mountain View police for not heeding their warning about her anger toward YouTube. They said police should have prevented the attack and her suicide.
The footage released Friday came from the cameras of both officers who interacted with Aghdam around 1:38 a.m. on April 3, as well as a police dispatcher’s inquiry about a missing-persons report issued for her.
In the ensuing 10 hours, Aghdam went to a local gun range to practice using her recently purchased 9 mm Smith & Wesson pistol, then went to the YouTube campus and opened fire at an outdoor patio, wounding three employees before she shot and killed herself.
The video shows Mountain View police officers trying to determine why Aghdam was considered “at-risk” — a notation they found on her missing person report. They even called the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, where she had originally been reported missing.
“This doesn’t say why they put her at risk on here,” a female call taker from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department says in the video.
Later in the phone conversation, the representative from the sheriff’s department says: “I think it’s just because she left her cell phone at home and didn’t take any type of banking information with her and just disappeared. No prior missing.”
During the exchange with Aghdam, a female officer asked pointed questions.
Officer: “Are you taking any type of medication at all?”
Aghdam: “No.”
Officer: “Are you supposed to take medication?
Aghdam: “No.”
Officer: “You don’t want to hurt yourself, do you?
Aghdam: Shakes her head. “No.”
Officer: “And you don’t want to hurt anybody else?
Aghdam: Shakes her head no.
Officer: “You don’t want to commit suicide, anything like that, right?
Aghdam: Shakes her head no.
Aghdam told police she was in Mountain View because she had not been getting along with her family in San Diego. Eventually the officers told Aghdam they would notify her father and tell him she was found safe and did not want to be contacted.
In the initial call police had with Ismail Aghdam, he confirmed the family discord and asked police if his daughter planned to return home. Officers told him it did not appear so. He reportedly thanked the officer for the call and hung up.
About an hour later, the father called back Mountain View police to tell officers his daughter had recently become upset about changes on the YouTube platform that had impacted videos she had created on living a vegan lifestyle and suggested that may have been a reason she was in the area.
“At no point in either of our conversations did the family bring up any concerns about their daughter’s behavior, any potential violence she may carry out, or any likelihood that she could be a danger to herself or others,” Mountain View police reiterated in its Friday news release. “The tragedy of the incident at YouTube weighs heavily on our hearts but we support and stand by the actions taken by our officers in their contact with Ms. Aghdam.”
A great white shark’s Hollywood closeup, the plan to split California into three states and San Francisco 49er Reuben Foster’s court appearance are all in today’s Current.
The first officer to spot Aghdam’s vehicle was patrolling the parking lot on Showers Drive, and when a routine license-plate check of her car turned up the missing-persons report, police said, a second officer was sent for backup.
Police said officers did not find anything on Aghdam in a criminal-records search or in the state Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), which cross-references residents with registered guns with people prohibited from having firearms due to a serious criminal conviction or being deemed a public danger.
Jim Dudley, a criminal-justice lecturer at San Francisco State University and retired deputy chief with the San Francisco Police Department who reviewed the video, said there was no obvious evidence to compel officers to search or further interrogate Nasim Aghdam.
“She’s an adult, and her parent reported her missing. (The officers’) only obligation is to make sure she’s okay, make sure she wasn’t kidnapped or anything like that, and make sure she’s safe,” Dudley added. “If there was something in the report by the parents about a gun, or they said she’s been idealizing getting back at YouTube, then they would have an obligation to do more than they did.”
Dudley said “the Fourth Amendment is very clear when you can do a search or seizure,” also noting that Aghdam’s family said that they were unaware she owned a gun.
“There’s no objective suspicious activity that would make her the focus of a search,” Dudley said. “It’s human nature, people want to blame someone. But if not for the YouTube shootings, this would have been one of a thousand calls like that on that day.”
Staff writer Ethan Baron contributed to this report.
The full video released by Mountain View police is available here
To view the Mountain View Police Department’s body-camera video of officers’ April 3 encounter with Nasim Aghdam hours before the YouTube shooting, go to bayareane.ws/AghdamVid.
