The mother of the shooter from San Bernardino, California, who killed 14 people during a terrorist attack will be pleading guilty to destroying a map drawn by her son as a means to plan the shooting, according to a news release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
The release stated that Rafia Sultana Shareef, the mother of Dyed Rizwan Farook, “agreed to plead guilty to a one-count information charging her with alteration, destruction, and mutilation of records. The criminal information and related plea agreement were filed Monday in United States District Court in Riverside, and the documents became publicly available [on Tuesday, March 3].”
The statement further reads that under normal circumstances Shareef would be facing a maximum of 20 years in federal prison, but because she has pleaded guilty of those charges under plea agreement, the prosecutors will be seeking no more than an 18-month sentence.
She is set to appear in the federal court on March 16, according to the statement.
Her plea agreement, which was partially included in the news release, gave Shareef’s account of the situation, as well as other information regarding the shooting back in 2015. It stated that at the time prior to the shooting, which occurred on Dec. 2, 2015, Shareef was living at the residence of her son, her son’s wife, and her grandchild. On the day of the shooting, Shareef was falsely told by her son that he and his wife were going to a medical appointment at 8 a.m., and she was left with her grandchild in her care.
However, as indicated, Farook and his wife did not go to the medical appointment as he had told his mother, and instead, drove a black SUV that he had rented to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, according to the news release. Farook went into the regional center himself while his wife was in the car, left a bomb, which was concealed inside a bag, at the conference room where his coworkers were holding an event. Then both husband and wife left the center, only to return once more at around 10:58 a.m. to open fire on people both inside and outside the venue.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 14 people and injured 22.
Farook and his wife got into a gunfight with authorities hours later while driving around in San Bernardino, resulting in one injured officer and the deaths of Farook and his wife.
“Sometime between 11:43 a.m. and 3:06 p.m., while Shareef was still at her home, she learned that law enforcement had identified her son as a suspect in the IRC attack, the plea agreement states. In the presence of family members that afternoon, Shareef expressed her belief that her son and daughter-in-law had perpetrated the IRC attack,” the release stated.
It was at this time that Shareef went into her son’s bedroom and destroyed at least one of the documents by putting it through a shredder. According to the news release, she admitted to knowing that her son was the one who created the documents.
