ABCNews.com(SAN DIEGO) — Relatives of the suspect in Tuesday’s shooting at YouTube’s headquarters in California said they told police about her vendetta against the company and warned them “she might do something.”
Nasim Najafi Aghdam of San Diego allegedly opened fire at the tech giant’s Bay Area headquarters Tuesday afternoon, injuring three people before killing herself, according to police.
The shooting victims, one male and two females ranging in age from 27 to 36, did not have any connections to the suspect, police said.
The shooter’s motive remains unknown, according to authorities, but Aghdam’s family said she developed a vendetta against YouTube after a change in its filtering policy caused her to lose followers.
Aghdam’s family said she was a passionate vegan activist and often posted videos about animal cruelty.
Aghdam also had a website with a manifesto that targeted YouTube for demonetizing her videos and cutting her ad revenue, according to ABC affiliate KGO-TV.
“I’m being discriminated and filtered on YouTube, and I’m not the only one,” Aghdam said in one video. Aghdam had also embedded videos from other content creators who complained that YouTube’s new advertising policy caused them to lose traffic, subscribers and ad revenue.
Aghdam’s brother, who asked to conceal his identity, said his family reported her missing over the weekend when she disappeared and stopped answering phone calls.
The family’s worries grew when police said they had located her vehicle in Mountain View, about 30 miles southeast of YouTube’s headquarters, her brother told ABC affiliate KGTV.
“I Googled ‘Mountain View’ and it was close to YouTube headquarters. And she had a problem with YouTube,” he told KGTV. “So I called that cop again and told him there’s a reason she went all the way from San Diego to there, so she might do something.”
“So they didn’t do anything, and she got killed,” he said, adding, “And three or four more people got hurt.”
The Mountain View Police Department confirmed that officers had found a woman of the same name asleep in a vehicle early Tuesday morning in a parking lot.
“Our officers made contact with the woman after the license plate of her vehicle matched that of a missing person out of Southern California,” Mountain View Police spokeswoman Katie Nelson said in a statement. “The woman confirmed her identity to us and answered subsequent questions. At the conclusion of our discussion, her family was notified that she had been located.”
The Aghdam family said the shooting incident was totally out of character for Nasim.
“She was a nice person,” her brother said. “I mean, maybe not today, but she never hurt any creature.”
He said his sister would have celebrated her 39th birthday on Wednesday.
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