A shooting outside the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday left three men dead, including a mosque security guard, while two teenage suspects were later discovered dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds, authorities said.
Officer Anthony Carrasco said people reported multiple shots at the Islamic Center of San Diego, about 9 miles (14 km) north of downtown San Diego.
The Islamic Center is the largest mosque in San Diego County, according to its website. The campus includes the Al Rashid School, which the website says offers courses in Arabic language, Islamic studies and the Quran.
Aerial TV footage showed more than a dozen children holding hands and being walked out of the parking lot of the center that is surrounded by scores of police vehicles. The white mosque is in a neighborhood of homes, apartments and strip malls with Middle Eastern restaurants and markets.
All of the children who were attending a day school that is part of the mosque complex - the largest in San Diego county - were accounted for and safe after the shooting, which erupted shortly before 12 noon PDT (1900 GMT), according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl.
Wahl said the FBI was called in to assist in the investigation of the incident, which the police chief said authorities were treating as a hate crime.
Scores of law enforcement officers called to the Islamic Center encountered the bodies of three men shot dead outside the building, including a security guard who Wahl credited with likely having helped prevent further bloodshed.
A short time later, police discovered the bodies of two teenage males, aged 17 and 19, in a vehicle in the middle of a street, dead from apparently self-inflicted gunshot wounds, the chief said at an afternoon news conference.
He said investigators were still piecing together details of what precipitated the shooting and how the violence transpired.
