A relative of an alleged gunman in a mass shooting earlier this week denied his brother-in-law has ties with radical Islam Friday.
“He was not a radical,” Farhan Khan said of the suspect, Syed Farook, during an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt.
{mosads}“It’s his stupid action, nothing to do with religion at all,” Khan continued. “It shouldn’t happen. Something like this doesn’t relate to my religion.
“I am a Muslim [and] I’m a good person. And there’s a lot of good Muslims there. He was a bad person [and] that was his personal act.”
Police killed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, during an officer-involved shootout in Redlands, Calif. on Wednesday evening.
The couple allegedly fled the scene after opening fire on the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., that morning, killing 14 people and wounding at least 21 others.
Khan, who is married to Farook’s sister, expressed confusion on Friday over his relatives’ actions.
“I didn’t see it at all,” he said of the attack. “[He was a] normal person … as normal as you can think.
“Based on the stories, it looked like he went to the party and then he left and he was angry,” Khan said, citing a holiday party for Farook’s office at the Inland Regional Center he purportedly struck.
“I mean, it could be he planned,” he added of Farook. “God knows. I have no idea. And I really want to know what made him do something terrible like that.”
Farook worked as a county public health inspector at the Inland Regional Center, an organization serving the area’s developmentally disabled residents.
Khan voiced grief Friday over the fate of his relative’s daughter, a six-month-old infant orphaned by her parents’ deaths earlier this week.
“What’s the outcome?” he asked. “Some people cannot have kids. God gave you a gift of daughter, and you left that kid behind. What did you achieve?”
Khan additionally noted that he has begun the process of legally adopting the baby girl in the wake of her parent’s deaths last Wednesday.
Reports emerged Friday that Malik might have pledged support to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) during the mass shooting.
Three officials told CNN that she wrote a Facebook post expressing solidarity with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
One of the officials noted that Malik’s post appeared online under an alias. They did not specify how authorities knew the post came from Malik.