A 17-year-old North Carolina girl has been charged with murder by aiding and abetting following a deadly shooting at a San Diego mosque in May. Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced on Monday that a grand jury indicted the girl on three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy.
The teenager was arrested last week, just before she was due to begin the school year. She is accused of recording a livestream of the attack and disseminating the white-supremacist writings of the shooters. In North Carolina, aiding-and-abetting charges carry the same punishment as if the girl had committed the attack herself.
On May 18, Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, stormed the Islamic Center. They killed security guard Amin Abdullah and two other men before taking their own lives in a vehicle nearby. A security guard's gunfire and efforts to initiate a lockdown helped protect 140 children who were just steps away.
The attackers left behind rambling writings full of vitriol against a wide range of people. They cited the shooter who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, as one of their models for the violence.