How The Times covered the San Bernardino terrorist attack

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Shooting confirmed

L.A. Now’s breaking news team quickly confirmed reports of the shooting first shared by fire officials on social media.

Alerts sent

News is tweeted on the main @latimes account with 1.75 million followers. Shortly afterward, an email was sent to The Times breaking news subscribers.

Live updates begin

To augment the main news story, The Times launches a live blog that runs for eight days and includes hundreds of updates.

Reporter on the scene

Deaths confirmed

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Breaking news

What is the Inland Regional Center?

The Times explains that the fatal mass shooting in San Bernardino took place at a facility dedicated to helping people with disabilities. At the time it was unclear if the attack was connected to the facility.

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Breaking news

Holiday party was underway

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Breaking news

Police chief: 14 killed

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Breaking news

Video: Police storm building

At first, Dorothy Vong assumed it was a drill – just like all the others at her work. At the Inland Regional Center, where she’s a nurse, the staff works with clients and parents of clients who are sometimes angry. They have active-shooter drills every month or so.

“Drill started,” she texted her husband, Mark, around 11 a.m. She walked to a window nearby and filmed a video as law enforcement sprinted toward the building.

“Oh, that is scary,” a voice says calmly in the background.

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Video

Pursuit begins

Shooter was man who attended party

Second shooter is a woman

Suspects confirmed dead

San Bernardino fire officials point public to latimes.com

The San Bernardino Fire Department, which was first to tweet news about a mass shooting, points followers to latimes.com for live updates.

Farook is identified

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Breaking news

Families await word

(Los Angeles Times)

In the neighborhood where the shootout took place

(Los Angeles Times)

As night falls, neighbors recount terror as scores of rounds of bullets passed nearby.

Malik identified

(KTLA)

Tashfeen Malik, 27, is identified by police as the second shooter. Authorities at the time said she and Syed Farook were a couple.

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Breaking news

Main story updates

By late evening, The Times comprehensive main bar had been updated more than 20 times, giving readers the big picture on the day’s events.

Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia

Coworkers tell The Times that Syed Farook recently traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he had met online. The report is the first to disclose details that later emerge as significant.

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Exclusive

Custom digital presentation

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Times in-depth report summarizes the chaotic day of events, including a comprehensive timeline of the shooting and aftermath.

San Bernardino shooting victims: Who they were

A Times database tells the stories of the 14 people killed, as well as some of the wounded. Among the dead: A father of six. A free-spirit who befriended strangers in the grocery store checkout line. A mother of three who fled religious persecution in Iran. A woman who was 8 when she and her mother left Vietnam for a better life. The youngest was 26. The oldest was 60.

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Victims

For victim’s boyfriend, 22 hours of conflicting reports, then heartbreak

(Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

Ryan Reyes dropped off his boyfriend, Daniel Kaufman, at work Wednesday at 7 a.m. and traded texts and photos with him throughout the morning.

He was his usual cheerful, chattering self,” Reyes said.

Kaufman, 42, ran the coffee shop in building 3 at the Inland Regional Center, training the developmentally disabled clients who worked there.

The last message from Kaufman arrived at 10:37 a.m. — a picture of a friend he had met at a comic book conference.

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Enterprise

Video: San Bernadino vigil

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Second day front page

Tashfeen Malik got resident status via marriage.

(San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department)

We disclose that Farook and Malik have been in touch with a third terrorist suspect in California, which the FBI later confirmed. We also reveal that there is a “deeper terror matrix” behind the shootings, borne out later in Enrique Marquez’ indictment and Malik’s private messages on Facebook.

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Front page

Inside the shooters home

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Video
(Los Angeles Times)

(Getty Images)

Syed Rizwan Farook wanted a wife “who takes her religion very seriously.” He found Tashfeen Malik online. They seemed the answer to each other’s longings. What ignited their rage?

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Enterprise

FBI raids home of San Bernardino shooters friend over gun purchases

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

San Bernardino massacre shows terror attacks could be harder to stop, analysts say

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

This in-depth analysis three days after the slaughter explains how the San Bernardino shooting fits a pattern of recent terrorist attacks in the U.S.: each was inspired by foreign terrorist groups but not directed by them. The story reveals a critical theory of the case – that no evidence has emerged to link Farook and Malik to a larger conspiracy organized by Islamic State or other extremist group.

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Exclusive

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Front page

Worshipers in San Bernardino pray, grieve and try to make sense of the shooting

(Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

What Obama talked about

(Los Angeles Times)

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Front page
(Los Angeles Times)

(Los Angeles Times)

Couple had been radicalized ‘for quite some time’ before attack, officials say

(U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

We reveal that Farook and Malik had been long radicalized and had practiced target shooting at a local gun range. The story also discloses that the two semi-automatic assault rifles used in the rampage were purchased by a neighbor and friend who shared Farook’s radical beliefs.

Online loan may have helped couple fund their terror arsenal in San Bernardino attack

We report that the Farook-Malik couple secured a $28,500 loan in advance of the shootings, and authorities believe it helped them buy guns, ammo and explosives. We disclose that Farook left a bag of pipe bombs inside the building, apparently to target first-responders, and that the couple had studied “Inspire” magazine, the Al Qaeda handbook for building homemade bombs.

San Bernardino medic had 5 seconds to check if each massacre victim was alive or dead

(Marcus Yam /Los Angeles Times)

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Enterprise

Customers rush to gun stores to ease fears after San Bernardino shooting

(Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Pakistanis question teachers, students at seminary attended by San Bernardino shooter

(Farooq Naeem / AFP / Getty Images)

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Enterprise

San Bernardino shooters began plotting attack before their marriage, FBI chief says

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

We were first to report that Farook and Malik had radicalized online for years before they met. We also reported that Farook had planned terrorist acts in 2011 and 2012, years before he met Malik online, and that Enrique Marquez, Farook’s former friend and neighbor, had purchased two rifles used in the San Bernardino rampage. Marquez would later be charged with multiple felonies.

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Exclusive

Enrique Marquez, who bought rifles used in San Bernardino attack, had deep ties to gunman

(Courtesy of Viviana Ramirez)

(Los Angeles Times)

Amid Farook family violence, brothers were a study in contrasts

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

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Front page

‘All hell broke loose’ as police chased the San Bernardino shooters

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

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Enterprise

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Front page

Tashfeen Malik messaged Facebook friends about her support for jihad

(U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

We report exclusively that Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook in 2012 and 2014 to friends in Pakistan, embracing jihad long before she and her husband carried out the San Bernardino attack. The FBI later confirmed the story, while knocking back a New York Times story that said she had publicly posted here support on social media.

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Exclusive

Marquez and Farook plotted campus and freeway attacks, prosecutors allege

(U.S. District Court for the Central District of California)

We break news of Enrique Marquez Jr.’s arrest two minutes after he is formally charged, beating all other news organizations. The story shows how Marquez and Farook considered other deadly terrorist plots long before Farook and his wife used Marquez’ guns to carry out the San Bernardino attack.

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Exclusive

Pentagon weighs cybercampaign against Islamic State

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

We were the first to report that the White House wanted options for stepping up cyber attacks against Islamic State after investigators discovered that Farook and Malik had pledged allegiance to the group’s leader the day of the San Bernardino massacre.

What Tashfeen Malik’s visa application reveals about the San Bernardino killers

We were the first to get Malik’s K-1 visa application and produce a comprehensive story that shed light on the couple’s first meeting in Mecca and decision to marry.