Teen Mosque Shooters Plotted ‘All-Out Race War’ In Hitler-Praising Manifesto

The radicalized teenage suspects who shot up the Islamic Center of San Diego and killed three adult victims, including a security guard, aligned themselves with Adolf Hitler and spewed hatred against Muslims and Jews in a manifesto. 

The suspects, Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, targeted a mosque in their rampage, but appeared to hate many different groups of people, police said

“We also identified writings and various ideologies outlining religious and racial beliefs of how the world they envisioned should look. They didn’t discriminate on who they hated,” Mark Remily, special agent in charge of the FBI San Diego office, said in a Tuesday press briefing. 

Clark and Vazquez wrote a “nihilistic” manifesto before killing three people and then each other, according to the New York Post, which cited law enforcement sources.

“The 75-page document is laden with the same Nazi iconography that Clark was seen wearing during a horrifying livestream video of the attack, including the Black Sun, which is associated with Nazi SS head Heinrich Himmler, and Atomwaffen, which is tied to a violent neo-Nazi group,” the Post reported on Tuesday. 

The writings reportedly contained a chaotic blend of anti-Trump, anti-liberal, antisemitic, and homophobic rhetoric, tied together by a deep sense of resentment of their personal life standing.

A section believed to have been written by Clark reportedly drew ideological alignment with Hitler and expressed deep disdain for both Left and Right-wing ideology. The manifesto cites convicted mass killers — including Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, and Anders Breivik — as sources of inspiration, the Post reported. 

Clark reportedly targeted Muslims, Jews, and gay people in his writings and expressed a desire to spark an “all-out race war” that would usher in the “collapse of society.” 

Vazquez, in his section of the manifesto, described being short as a source of deep pain and humiliation.

“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’re still looking through electronics to give us the answers. But again, what I can say is they definitely had a broad hatred towards a lot of folks.” 

Authorities searched two residences in connection with the investigation and seized 30 firearms and a crossbow.

“I can tell you at this point the guns were not registered to these individuals and belong to the parents of one of the individuals, and exactly how they came into they were able to obtain them still under investigation,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters. 

The security guard shot to death “played a pivotal role” in stopping more casualties and likely saved the lives of school-aged children nearby, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said Monday.

On Monday afternoon, authorities said the mother of one of the suspects contacted the San Diego Police Department at 9:42 am to report that her son had gone missing, along with multiple firearms, and her car. She said he was suicidal and was probably with a friend.

SDPD said officers received reports of gunfire at the center located at 7050 Eckstrom Avenue at 11:43 am local time and responded within four minutes. Police found all three victims dead outside the center, then cleared each room amid a “chaotic” scene. No officers fired a shot during the active shooter incident, The Daily Wire previously reported.

“Officers were in the area still talking with mom, trying to piece together where they might be, the locations that she felt that they would be at, and that was just a few blocks away,” Chief Wahl said. “Those officers, once they heard what was happening at the Islamic Center, immediately dispatched themselves to the mosque.”

The teenage shooters, according to police, met each other online. 

“Through the course of that online communication, they discovered that they were both residing in the San Diego area, and they became acquaintances or associates in person, and had in-person contact at that point, but in terms of how the radicalization occurred, we’re still digging into all of it,” Remily said.