California terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik spent at least a year preparing for their attack, honing their shooting skills and getting their finances in order to ensure care for their daughter and her grandmother,
NBC News reports.
The Redlands, Calif., couple practiced at a Riverside-area gun range for a year or more before last week's siege at a health department complex in San Bernardino that killed 14 people, NBC News reports, citing two unnamed sources.
Farook and Malik also were making plans for some time to "take care of both grandma and the baby," counterterrorism officials tells NBC News.
The married couple lived with their 6-month-old daughter and Farook's 62-year-old mother, Rafia Farook
— and left the baby with Rafia Farook on the morning of the attack.
Investigators are now looking at a $28,500 deposit made to Farook's bank account before the rampage that "would be consistent with them making preparations for grandma and the kid," a counterterrorism official tells NBC News.
The money was borrowed from an
online lender.
"They had purposely thought through that problem," said the official. "There were other indications of preparations."
NBC News, citing a senior law enforcement official, reports FBI investigators have been told Farook talked about an attack in California as early as 2012 — bolstering suspicions Farook was radicalized before he traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with Malik.
The San Bernardino slaughter is being investigated as an
act of terrorism, the FBI has said.
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