– ‘Mind-boggling’ –
A pro-IS news agency, Aamaq, on Friday said the mass shooting was perpetrated by sympathizers of the radical group, which has urged followers in the United States and elsewhere to carry out lone-wolf attacks.
Relatives were at a loss to explain how the couple, who had an infant daughter and seemed to be living a normal life, could have committed mass murder.
“I can never imagine my brother or my sister-in-law doing something like this. Especially because they were happily married, they had a beautiful six-month-old daughter,” Farook’s sister Saira Khan told CBS News.
“It’s just mind-boggling why they would do something like this.”
The family’s attorneys said while the couple were devout Muslims, there was no hint they had become radicalized.
Attorney Mohammad Abuershaid said few people came in contact with Malik, who wore the full-face veil and was soft-spoken and shy.
“The women (in the family) communicated with her. Farook didn’t want anyone else to talk to her,” he said, adding that the men in the family had never even seen Malik’s face.
Abuershaid said Farook had met Malik in 2013 through an online marriage site and had travelled to marry her in Saudi Arabia last year, where she lived.
One of Farook’s colleagues said he was convinced Malik had radicalized her husband.
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