Last Monday, at around 11:40 a.m., two teenage shooters killed three victims in a hate crime attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque and Islamic community center in the San Diego area. Hundreds of students, faculty, and San Diego community members gathered for the Muslim Student Association of UC San Diego and The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science’s vigil in front of Geisel Library on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.  

The shooting took place while over 140 children were attending class at the center’s pre-K to third-grade school. The three victims, identified as Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha, and Nadir Awad, were all well-known members of the ICSD.

Law enforcement and community members have praised each of the victims for their heroic actions in preventing more deaths and saving the lives of the children at the ICSD. 

Several minutes after an individual placed a call to the San Diego Police Department reporting gunshots at the ICSD, another placed a second call reporting additional gunshots down the road from the center. A few blocks away, SDPD officers located a landscaper whom the suspects shot at, hitting the individual’s helmet. In the same area, officers located a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, where they found both suspects dead. 

The two teenage suspects have since been identified as Cain Clark and Caleb Vazquez, both of whom died from self-inflicted wounds following the attack. 

The two shooters livestreamed their attack. Unknown individuals posted a 75-page manifesto titled “The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant,” co-authored by Clark and Vazquez, with hate speech toward non-Christian and non-White groups. The manifesto praised previous mass shooters, including Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people and injured 89 more in an attack on an Islamic center in Christchurch, New Zealand.  

The FBI and SDPD are investigating the attack and treating the case as a hate crime. Officers located the three firearms used in the attack, scrawled with symbols tied to Nazism and messages from previous mass shooters. The two suspects found dead in the vehicle were wearing vests with Nazi symbols.

An FBI raid on three homes connected to the suspects found a total of over 30 firearms and a crossbow. The owner of the seized firearms has not been identified at this time. 

A report on Thursday from The New York Times found that law enforcement previously flagged one of the suspects, Vazquez, for troubling social media posts idolizing Nazis and mass shooters. These findings resulted in law enforcement seizing 26 firearms from Vazquez’s father. Vazquez had been placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold before the shooting, according to the Times. 

Speakers at the UCSD vigil honored the lives lost in the shooting and addressed issues of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that affect their community. Several event organizers and members of the ICSD community shared personal anecdotes honoring the three victims.

Abdullah, who served as a security guard for the ICSD, died while protecting the center from the two attackers. Abdullah identified the suspects as they approached the center carrying firearms, immediately used his radio to place the center on lockdown, and subsequently engaged in a shootout with the two suspects, according to SDPD Chief Scott Wahl.

A father of eight children, Abdullah was the first person many members met when entering the ICSD. Imam and director of the ICSD, Taha Hassane, who spoke during the vigil, described the impact Abdullah made on the community.

“Once you speak to him for the first time you think you have known him for so long; he never stops smiling,” Hassane said. “He’s the one who stands at the gate when we are praying inside to protect our backs, when we are celebrating inside, when we are learning, when we are enjoying our time inside the building. He is the one standing to protect all of us.”

Kaziha, who went by Abul Iz, worked as the handyman, cook, and shopkeeper for the ICSD. He was a founding member of the ICSD’s community since its construction in 1986.  Awad lived across the street from the ICSD, and his wife is a teacher at the school in the center. 

Speakers at the vigil described the heroic actions of Kaziha and Awad in distracting the shooters from the school and leading them toward the building’s parking lot. 

“They died together; they fell together, the bodies next to one another,” said Hassane. “They put their bodies in front of the shooters so everyone inside the building, including me and my wife, were saved.”

Adam, a member of MSA UCSD and a San Diego native, addressed the crowd, describing the impact Kaziha had on everyone in the ICSD. 

“What people have seen about Abul Iz is not just how much the community loved him but how much he made himself known and available,” Adam said. “No words can describe how much of a backbone and pillar Abul Iz was to this community.”

Omar Mokhashi, a third-year student who attended the vigil, spoke to The UCSD Guardian about how the shooting has impacted the Muslim community. 

“When something like this happens so close to your community and directly to your own community center or place of worship, it really hits you way harder,” Mokhashi said. “It really makes it feel like a personal attack.” 

A Council on American-Islamic Relations report from 2025 highlighted an all-time high in complaints of Islamophobia across the nation, with 8,683 complaints documenting Islamophobic incidents filed in 2025. The ICSD has also seen an increase in threats against the center since Oct. 7, 2023. 

In an interview with The Guardian, Omar Abusham, programs and outreach coordinator of CAIR San Diego, addressed the effects of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric on the Muslim community. 

“Concerns of the MSA have not been addressed on multiple occasions; I know that there was an Islamophobic display that was on campus only last week,” Abusham said. “These words are not just words, and we saw that on Monday. These words turned into action and this action led to the killing of three amazing individuals.”

The investigation into the shooting is still ongoing. A tip line has been created asking for any additional evidence from the public.