A 17-year-old North Carolina high school student was indicted on Monday on murder charges for allegedly helping livestream and record a deadly attack on a San Diego mosque earlier this year. Prosecutors said she shared the white supremacist manifesto and aided the gunmen from afar.
Authorities arrested the teenager in North Carolina last week just before classes for the new school year were set to begin. Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced during a news conference in Winston-Salem that a grand jury formally indicted the girl on three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy.
Although the teenager was not physically present in California when the violence unfolded, prosecutors intend to try her as an adult under state law. Investigators stated that she agreed prior to the shooting to record the livestream, distribute the video file, and publish a white supremacist document written by the attackers.
The May 18 Attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego
The underlying shooting took place on May 18, 2026. Two teenage gunmen—identified by law enforcement as 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez and 17-year-old Cain Clark—stormed the Islamic Center of San Diego wearing GoPro helmets to capture the rampage. The pair encountered swift resistance from a longtime security guard who initiated a lockdown, protecting roughly 140 children who were just steps away inside the facility.
The security guard, Amin Abdullah, was killed alongside two other men: caretaker Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, who was married to a teacher at the center. Before taking their own lives in a vehicle a few blocks away, the gunmen left behind extensive writings detailing extremist ideologies, antisemitic diatribes, and references to accelerationism and the 2019 mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand.
O’Neill revealed that the teenage conspirators planned to extend their violence beyond the mosque. Their plan that day was to commit mass murders not only at the mosque but to follow up at a local Jewish temple and finally at a predominantly African American high school there in town,
O’Neill said during the announcement.
Aiding, Abetting, and Online Radicalization Networks
Under North Carolina legal statutes, individuals who assist in orchestrating a crime can face identical criminal penalties to those who pull the trigger. O’Neill explained that the defendant shared the shooters’ criminal intent and was in a position to render aid during the crime, yet chose to facilitate the attack instead.
Investigators uncovered that the defendant and the two gunmen communicated through encrypted channels on the messaging platform Signal. Reid Davis, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office, noted that a multi-agency coalition reviewed upwards of 4 million messages, executed 30 search warrants, and conducted over 100 interviews to unravel the digital conspiracy.
O’Neill added that the network’s dynamic radicalizes one another to the point where they carry out these horrific crimes of violence and murder.
Beyond recording and broadcasting the live assault, investigators found that the North Carolina teenager purchased a white supremacist symbol patch and mailed it to one of the shooters to wear during the attack.
Legal Defense and Community Response
Defense counsel Alan Doorasamy Sr. defended his client in an email statement to reporters. At this time I can confirm that my client is innocent of all these charges,
Doorasamy wrote, adding that he had not yet received evidence from law enforcement.
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