Community members in San Diego mourned three men killed during a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, where authorities said the victims tried to protect children inside the mosque when two teen gunmen entered during the Monday attack. San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the men were shot while confronting and distracting the attackers as the mosque moved people into lockdown.
Wahl said authorities pieced together how the attack unfolded using security camera footage. He said Amin Abdullah, who served as a security guard for about a decade, confronted the gunmen after they entered and exchanged gunfire, while he used a radio to warn people to go into lockdown.
Wahl said the shooters wounded Abdullah as he kept firing, then forced the gunmen back outside into the mosque’s parking lot. He said the gunmen returned inside and searched rooms that had been emptied during the lockdown.
Wahl said Kaziha and Awad confronted the gunmen when the attackers went back outside. He said Kaziha was able to call 911 before both men were fatally shot in the parking lot.
Imam Taha Hassane identified the three victims as Amin Abdullah, 51, Nadir Awad, 57, and Mansour Kaziha, 78, who was known as Abu Ezz. Hassane said, “We call them our brothers in the community. We call them our martyrs and our heroes.”
Wahl said all three victims “did not die in vain,” adding that without the men’s actions—“without distracting the attention, without delaying the actions of these two individuals”—there would have been more fatalities. Authorities described the mosque as the largest in San Diego, drawing thousands from across the region during major holidays, and said it also provides meals during Ramadan, hosts a school for Arabic and Islamic studies, and has a store inside.
Community members said they struggled to imagine the center without Abdullah, who greeted visitors with a smile and the traditional Muslim greeting “as-salamu alaikum,” which means “peace be upon you,” according to longtime attendee Mahmood Ahmadi. Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq said Abdullah was at the mosque nearly every day and was dedicated to his wife and eight kids, and Abdullah’s daughter Hawaa Abdullah said her father was “loving and supportive,” a “best friend” and a role model.
Hawaa Abdullah told a Tuesday news conference that her father sometimes skipped eating during his shifts because he was afraid that if he were on break “something bad will happen.” She also said Abdullah was raised Christian, described in a 2019 YouTube video how he later found Islamic faith after graduating high school, and said he had gone on a pilgrimage trip to Mecca with Farooq more recently.
In accounts of Abdullah’s life beyond the mosque, Khalid Alexander said he and Abdullah converted to Islam around the same time, and that they lived in a different San Diego mosque together when they first became Muslims. Alexander said he had watched Abdullah take pride in caring for the community as a security guard, describing it as “his dream job,” and he said they discussed concerns about rising “anti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-immigrant” sentiments that he said arrived at the mosque through hate mail, prompting security changes, according to Hassane.
Community members described Kaziha as a decades-long caretaker at the center, saying he served since the mosque was built in the 1980s. Hassane said Kaziha was the first person to call when something went wrong and described him as “the handyman,” “the cook,” “the caretaker,” “the storekeeper” and “he was everything.”
Kaziha’s son, Yasser Kaziha, described his father as “a pillar of our household” and said he taught his family to expect hardships and push through them to “fill our individual purposes.” Other attendees said Awad, who lived across the street and attended prayers “every single day,” ran toward the building when he heard gunfire because his wife teaches at the school there, according to Hassane.
As relatives and community members continued to mourn, Alexander said the three men’s actions embodied what he described as the virtues of Islamic community in San Diego. He said, “They really represented everything that’s beautiful about Islam and everything that is beautiful about Muslims.”