A 17-year-old’s mother had already called San Diego police to report her son was suicidal and possibly armed when the first shots rang out at the San Diego Islamic Center Monday morning — officers were still interviewing her when the active shooter calls came in.
Her son, identified by three sources as Cain Clark, and an 18-year-old companion had by then opened fire on worshippers outside the center in the Clairemont Mesa neighborhood, killing three adults. The two then turned their weapons on themselves. Police found them dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds in a building several blocks away, minutes after the attack.
Five people died in total. San Diego police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.
The weapons told part of the story before investigators said a word. One of the guns carried hate speech written directly on it, sources told the Los Angeles Times, and anti-Islamic writings were recovered from a vehicle connected to the suspects. Clark also left a suicide note before leaving his family’s home — the note, sources said, contained language about racial pride. At least one of the firearms used in the attack was taken from his parents’ home.
FBI agents moved quickly, searching Clark’s residence on Lehrer Drive, roughly two miles from the Islamic Center, Monday afternoon.
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The shooting unfolded at approximately 11:30 a.m. Three adults were found dead in front of the building when officers arrived at 11:45. A landscaper was shot at but not wounded on the 7100 block of Salerno Street shortly after. The two suspects were found dead inside a building on the 3800 block of Salerno Street.
The Islamic Center operates a K-through-12 school on its grounds. Classes were in session at the time of the attack. No children were injured. Five San Diego Unified School District schools in the surrounding area were placed on lockdown as a precaution.
Clark’s path through the school system is a portrait of gradual withdrawal from public life. He attended elementary and middle school in person within the district, then moved to full-time online enrollment after the pandemic. This school year he was registered with a virtual learning academy and was on track to graduate. He had previously wrestled at Madison High School but had no on-campus presence this year.
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District spokesperson James Canning was careful to draw a line between the student and the institution.
“It’s important for people to understand this person wasn’t there on Friday and then all of a sudden Monday this is the situation,” Canning said. “They were in their virtual classroom.”
Little has emerged publicly about the second suspect beyond his age.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the mother’s call described a runaway juvenile, reported missing guns, and noted that her son had left with a companion — both of them wearing camouflage. Officers were with her when the shooting began. Wahl acknowledged that online hate speech linked to the suspects was general in nature rather than directed specifically at the Islamic Center, and that no advance threat targeting the mosque had been identified.
“It was more generalized,” he said.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria did not equivocate. He named what investigators were still formally working to confirm.
“Hate has no home in San Diego,” Gloria said. “Islamophobia has no home in San Diego. An attack on any one of our communities — on any San Diegan because of who they are, what they believe, or how they pray — is an attack on all of us.”
San Diego Unified Superintendent Fabi Bagula said counselors were being made available across the district and affirmed that every student, family and community member deserved to worship and gather without fear.
The center and the community it serves now absorb the weight of that assertion against the reality of what happened on a Monday morning when school was in session, three people were killed outside their place of worship, and the call that might have prevented it reached police just minutes too late.