New findings have come to light following Monday's fatal shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, in which three people were murdered.
Law enforcement sources close to the ongoing investigation told The Los Angeles Times that the two male suspects, aged 17 and 19, were heavily armed with long guns when they breached the religious complex.
Investigators found hate speech scrawled directly onto the surface of at least one of the firearms used in the assault. Furthermore, explicit anti-Islamic literature and writings were uncovered by detectives inside a getaway vehicle.
The armed duo murdered three people at the complex, including a security guard, before fleeing the scene. Police later discovered the pair dead inside a vehicle at a separate location from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
According to law enforcement sources, "at least one of the suspects took a firearm from their parents’ home" and left behind a definitive suicide note, "writing about racial pride."
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl briefed reporters on the rapid sequence of events, confirming that the 17-year-old suspect systematically pilfered three weapons from his mother's residence before embarking on the lethal raid.
The mother had contacted police earlier to report that her son, her vehicle, and "several of her weapons" were unaccounted for, prompting an immediate emergency response.
Chief Wahl emphasized that the quantity of firepower stolen by the teenager immediately signaled to investigators that a mass casualty event was imminent, shifting the police response from a standard welfare check to a major security operation.
“One person that’s suicidal is not going to take three weapons from a location," Wahl explained.
The ominous discovery of the missing arsenal triggered “a much bigger threat assessment" as tactical units scrambled to locate the teenager's whereabouts before he could strike, Wahl noted.
Despite the explicit hate speech recovered from the crime scenes, authorities clarified that the gunmen did not name a precise target in their final communications.
Chief Wahl stated that the venomous materials recovered from the vehicle and the firearms pointed to a broad, generalized ideology of bigotry rather than a pre-planned conspiracy against that specific congregation.
“There was no specific threat, especially no specific threat to the Islamic Center. It was just general hate kind of speech that I think covered a wide gamut," Chief Wahl told reporters. “Again, we are still actively investigating this as we speak, but it was more generalized."