shooters at a San Diego mosque<\/a> were beloved pillars of the community, and died while saving roughly 140 children who were in the building at the time of the attack, authorities said Tuesday.<\/p>\nAll three men were shot while trying to delay and distract the two gunmen who barged into the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said.<\/p>\n
The Imam of the Islamic Center of San Diego, Taha Hassane, identified the three victims as Amin Abdullah, 51, Nadir Awad, 57, and Mansour Kaziha, 78, who was known as Abu Ezz. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe call them our brothers in the community. We call them our martyrs and our heroes,\u201d Hassane said.<\/p>\n
Authorities described how the shooting unfolded based on security camera footage at the mosque, which is the largest in San Diego and attracts thousands of people from across the region during major holidays. In addition to having prayer five times a day, it also provides dinners and breakfasts during the Ramadan fasting period, hosts a school for Arabic and Islamic studies, and has a store inside.<\/p>\n
When the two shooters, ages 17 and 18, entered, they passed Abdullah, seemingly without notice, Wahl said. Abdullah, who was a security guard for the mosque for about a decade, quickly confronted them and exchanged gunfire.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he grabbed his radio and warned everyone to go into lockdown. As the shooters made their way into the lobby, they wounded him as he kept firing, forcing them back outside into the mosque\u2019s parking lot. There, he was fatally shot.<\/p>\n
The shooters went back inside and searched through rooms that were emptied during the lockdown, Wahl said. The gunmen then went back out to the parking lot where Kaziha and Awad confronted them. Kaziha was able to call 911 before the gunmen fatally shot both men outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll three of our victims did not die in vain. Without distracting the attention, without delaying the actions of these two individuals, without question, there would have been many more fatalities,\u201d Wahl said.<\/p>\n
Amid an outpouring of condolences from Muslim leaders and politicians around the country, people in the tight-knit community say they are struggling to imagine the Islamic Center without the three men \u2014 who were widely regarded as central figures who made the mosque feel like home.<\/p>\n
Abdullah greeted all visitors to the mosque with a smile and the traditional Muslim greeting in Arabic of \u201cas-salamu alaikum,\u201d or \u201cpeace be upon you,\u201d according to Mahmood Ahmadi, a longtime attendee. Another friend, Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq, said Abdullah was there nearly every single day and was dedicated to his wife and eight kids.<\/p>\n
His daughter Hawaa Abdullah, surrounded by family members at a Tuesday news conference, said her father was loving and supportive, a \u201cbest friend\u201d and a role model. He took his job protecting the community so seriously he sometimes wouldn’t eat during his shifts, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to save his food until after he left the job because he was afraid that if he were on his break, something bad will happen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Abdullah was raised Christian and described in a 2019 YouTube video his journey discovering the Islamic faith after graduating high school. Farooq said he met Abdullah shortly after he became a Muslim in the 1990s. Most recently, they had gone on a pilgrimage trip to Mecca together. <\/p>\n
Khalid Alexander converted to Islam around the same time as Abdullah roughly 30 years ago. The two men lived in a different San Diego mosque together at the time, where they helped each other imagine how to make meaningful, stable lives. Over the years, Alexander said that he has watched Abdullah take pride in his ability to care for his community as a security guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was his dream job,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n
Alexander said that he and Abdullah sometimes discussed concerns about rising \u201canti-Muslim, anti-Black, anti-immigrant\u201d sentiments on television. Often, those sentiments came directly to the San Diego mosque through hate mail, which prompted the hiring of security guards like Abdullah and installation of cameras, Hassane said.<\/p>\n
Alexander said Abdullah \u201cwas keenly aware of the dangers of his job \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly why he chose to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaziha, known as Abu Ezz, was an integral part of the mosque since it was built in the 1980s, and has served the community \u201cnon-stop\u201d since then, Hassane said.<\/p>\n
Hassane and others knew Kaziha as the first person to call when something went wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the handyman. He was the cook. He was the caretaker. He was the storekeeper. He was everything,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Yasser Kaziha, Mansour Kaziha\u2019s son, described his father as not only a pillar of the community, but \u201ca pillar of our household.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe taught us to expect hardships and push through them to fill our individual purposes just like he did,\u201d Yasser Kaziha said during a vigil Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
Alexander has known Mansour Kaziha since before Alexander converted to Islam, and still remembers the first time in the mid-1990s when he was welcomed into Kaziha’s home. Decades later, Alexander said it was hard to imagine the center without him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like, kind of like the father of that space,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n
Awad lived across the street from the Islamic Center and attended prayers \u201cevery single day,\u201d Hassane said. <\/p>\n
When he heard gunfire, Awad he ran toward the building, where his wife is a teacher at the school. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe left his home, trying to go and do something to help,\u201d Hassane said during the vigil.<\/p>\n
The three men’s actions, Alexander said, embodied the virtues of Islamic community in San Diego.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really represented everything that\u2019s beautiful about Islam and everything that is beautiful about Muslims,\u201d Alexander said.<\/p>\n
__<\/p>\n
This story has been corrected to say Abdullah had eight children, not nine. It has also been updated to correct the spelling of Nadir Awad\u2019s first name. It\u2019s Nadir, not Nader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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