A 17-year-old from North Carolina has been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder over her alleged role in the shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego on 18 May 2026, which killed three people.
Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced the charges against Sarah Santiago after she was apprehended last week and indicted by a grand jury on Monday. Santiago was arrested and indicted just before she was due to begin the school year.
Authorities allege that Santiago recorded the attack as it was livestreamed. They also allege that she disseminated the attackers’ white supremacist writings and agreed to publish them.
The indictment says Santiago assisted in the murders by ‘planning and agreeing beforehand’ to livestream the event, disseminate the recording and release a manifesto. It names Abdullah Nadirad and Mansour Kaziha among the victims.
The alleged shooters were Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18. They took their own lives after the attack.
A security guard at the mosque exchanged gunfire with the shooters and drove them back outside. The guard also initiated a lockdown during the shooting. There were 140 children inside the mosque at the time.
The case centres on whether alleged pre-attack planning to spread material online can amount to aiding and abetting murder. Under North Carolina law, a person who aids and abets another to commit a crime is guilty of that crime just as if he or she had personally done all of the acts necessary to constitute the crime.
The precise legal theory prosecutors will use to link the alleged planning and dissemination to the killings is unclear. It is also unclear how they will seek to prove that Santiago agreed beforehand to take part in the alleged plan.
Santiago’s attorney, Doorasamy, denied the allegations. ‘Currently, I can affirm that my client is innocent of all these allegations,’ Doorasamy said in an email to CNN.
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