Shooting suspect ‘hated’ YouTube
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SAN BRUNO, Calif. -- A woman suspected of shooting three people at YouTube headquarters before killing herself was furious with the company because it had stopped paying her for videos she posted on the platform, her father said late Tuesday.
Two law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Nasim Aghdam of Southern California. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
YouTube had "stopped everything," and "she was angry," her father Ismail Aghdam said from his San Diego home in a telephone interview with the Bay Area News Group.
People who post on YouTube can receive money from advertisements that accompany their videos, but the company "de-monetizes" some channels for reasons including inappropriate material or having fewer than 1,000 subscribers.
Ismail Aghdam said he reported his daughter missing on Monday after she did not answer her phone for two days.
He said the family received a call from Mountain View police around 2 a.m. Tuesday saying they found Nasim sleeping in a car.
He said he warned them she might be headed to YouTube because she "hated" the company.
Mountain View Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson confirmed officers located a woman by the same name asleep in a vehicle asleep in a Mountain View parking lot Tuesday morning.
Nelson said the woman declined to answer further questions but the police spokeswoman did not respond to a question about whether police were warned Aghdam might go to YouTube.
Authorities said earlier Tuesday that the shooting was being investigated as a domestic dispute.
Terrified employees huddled inside, calling 911, as officers and federal agents swarmed the company's suburban campus sandwiched between two interstate freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area city of San Bruno.
YouTube employee Dianna Arnspiger said she was on the building's second floor when she heard gunshots, ran to a window and saw the shooter on a patio outside.
She said the woman wore glasses and a scarf and was using a "big huge pistol."
"It was a woman and she was firing her gun. And I just said, 'Shooter,' and everybody started running," Arnspiger said.
She and others hid in a conference room for an hour while another employee repeatedly called 911 for updates.
"It was terrifying," she said.
A 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman was in fair condition, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital said.
Witnesses described terror before officers arrived and discovered a victim near a front door and then found the shooter several minutes later with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said.
He said two additional gunshot victims were found at an adjacent business minutes later. Barberini initially said there were four people who had been shot but later clarified that a fourth person had suffered an ankle injury.
Zach Vorhies, 37, a senior software engineer at YouTube, said he was at his desk working on the second floor of one of the buildings when the fire alarm went off.