San Bernardino Terrorist Studied Local High School

Investigators have found multiple photographs of a local high school on the cell phone belonging to San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook, according to local news sources in the town.

Farouk “had multiple photos” of Carter High School, according to the San Bernardino Sun‘s Beau Yarbrough and Doug Sounders.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Farook had visited 11 school cafeterias as part of his job as a country health inspector, raising suggestions he could have targeted school.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked a holiday party for his co-workers at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino last Wednesday, killing 14 and wounding 21. Farouk and Malik were both killed by police in pursuit later the same day. The FBI reportedly searched Carter High School on Tuesday. Local officials in San Bernardino have begun sweeping the other high schools, using bomb-sniffing dogs and other tactics.

Thus far, all of the schools investigated have been found to be safe. “Our officers did not find anything abnormal and deemed all of the sites safe,” a local official told the Sun.

That might not have been the case if Farook had survived. Former Green Beret Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a counterterrorism expert, told the Sun that Farook could have been planning to attack the school. “That tells me that he is doing close reconnaissance of a target area. They want to look at ingress routes, the egress routes and the centers of large population like a cafeteria,” he told the Sun.

He added: “That’s why they’re going for the schools, that’s what they’re doing with the in-your-face violence.”

The school is named after Wilmer Amina Carter, an African-American Democrat who recently retired from the State Assembly.

On the day of the terror attacks, Carter posted to her Facebook page: “San Bernardino is my hometown and all those people who were there today is like family. We pray for them, the officers in charges, and all those who are putting their lives on the line to secure the area and saves lives.”

Farook himself attended La Sierra High School in nearby Riverside, graduating in 2004. Carter High School opened in 2001.