The woman who allegedly shot three people at YouTube’s headquarters in California on Tuesday, before apparently taking her own life, held a grudge against the video-sharing company, according to her family and her own social media posts.
Authorities identified the suspect who wounded a man and two women at YouTube's campus in San Bruno as Nasim Aghdam, 39, a San Diego resident. Aghdam died of a gunshot wound that police said appears to have been self-inflicted.
Police said a motive for the attack has not been identified and no current evidence suggests Aghdam knew the victims or individuals were specifically targeted.
However, Aghdam's father, Ismail Aghdam, said his daughter told her family just a few weeks ago that she was "angry" with YouTube because she believed it was censoring her videos and had stopped paying her for her content. Ismail Aghdam made the comments in an interview Tuesday night with the Bay Area News Group.
Ismail Aghdam said in the interview that prior to the shooting the family had reported his daughter missing in Southern California and informed police she might be going to YouTube because she "hated" the company. He said hours before his daughter caused an afternoon of terror in San Bruno, the family received a phone call from police saying she had been located asleep in her car and everything was "under control."
A USA TODAY request for comment from YouTube's parent company Google about the censoring allegation was not returned. The San Bruno Police Department did not immediately reply to a USA TODAY question seeking clarification over Ismail Aghdam's claims about what he said police told him about his daughter. It was not clear, for example, whether police officers were aware of his warning she might go to YouTube.
Aghdam’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram accounts were suspended late Tuesday, but some clips of the material she published there have surfaced in news reports, on social media and on a still-live website address attached to her YouTube channels.
In a video posted on YouTube on Jan. 28, Aghdam alleges she's "being discriminated (against) and filtered on YouTube and I’m not the only one."
In an Instagram post dated March 18, Aghdam claims that all her YouTube "channels got filtered by youtube so my videos hardly get views ... This is the peaceful tactic used on the internet to censor and suppress people who speak the truth and are not good for the financial, political … gains of the system and big businesses."
Aghdam described herself on her Instagram account as "Athlete Artist Comedian Poet Model Singer Host Actor Director Producer" and the videos she made appear to mix satire and dark humor to rail against authority, capitalism and popular culture. She posted videos in English, Turkish and Farsi, the official language of Iran.
In one section of her website that also includes a quote attributed to the German dictator Adolf Hitler she alleges: "There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!"
Aghdam, according to her father, was an animal lover and campaigned for vegan-related issues. He told the Bay Area News Group the family emigrated from Iran in 1996 and his daughter had shown no previous signs of being inclined to violence.
Public records show that at one point Aghdam while living in San Diego established a charity called Peace Thunder Inc. and spent time training to be a pilot.