The woman who opened fire inside YouTube headquarters in California on Tuesday posted bizarre content online that accused the video platform’s employees of being “closed-minded” and “de-monetizing” her posts before she drove hundreds of miles to carry out the shooting.
Nasim Aghdam, 39, of San Diego, Calif., a self-described “vegan bodybuilder,” was found dead inside YouTube headquarters in San Bruno after allegedly wounding three people. Aghdam was reported missing on Monday by her father Ismail Aghdam, who told police his daughter might be heading to YouTube because she “hated” the company, Mercury News reported.
“She was always complaining that YouTube ruined her life,” Shahran Aghdam, the alleged shooter’s brother, also told reporters, according to Mercury News.
Police found her sleeping in a vehicle parked in a lot in the Silicon Valley hub of Mountain View around 2 a.m. Tuesday, about 30 miles from where she would later carrying out her rampage. She had driven more than 500 miles from San Diego to San Bruno.
But before the rampage and the concerned father’s warning, Aghdam had voiced her hatred for YouTube on her social media pages and website. Using the name Nasime Sabz, the 39-year-old ran a Facebook page, two Instagram pages and multiple YouTube channels that garnered thousands of subscribers.
Ed Barberini, the San Bruno Police Chief, told Fox News on Wednesday that police are investigating Aghdam’s disgust and hatred toward YouTube.
“That is the direction that we’re being pointed to based on the information that we have now,” Barberini said.
Aghdam described herself as a “vegan bodybuilder and animal rights activist” promoting a “healthy and humane lifestyle.” Her pages were littered with strange workout videos, vegan cooking tutorials mixed with graphic animal abuse videos.
One clip showed animals being skinned alive while another video, which has been removed from YouTube, allegedly showed a “stolen pet dog cooked alive.” She was also pictured at an animal rights protest in 2009 wearing a wig and jeans with large blood drops painted on them.
“For me, animal rights equal human rights,” Aghdam told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2009.
Another social media account said she was a model, artist and comedian. Her website featured bold fonts and rants about YouTube’s policies that she claimed were barring her from getting video views.
“Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” one of the messages on the site said. “There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!”
She posted a screenshot complaining about the lack of money she earned in one of her videos after YouTube placed an age restriction on it. She said the company of “de-monetized” her channels and filtering it. In a video shared on Twitter, Aghdam said YouTube employees wanted users to be “their slaves.”
“This video got age restricted after new close-minded youtube employees, got control of my farsi youtube channel last year 2016 & began filtering my videos to reduce views & suppress & discaurage me from making videos!” she wrote on her website.
Ismail Aghdam told Mercury News Tuesday night his daughter told the family a couple weeks ago that YouTube was censoring her content. She also claimed she stopped receiving money for her content.
“She was angry,” the father said.
YouTube users can receive money from advertisements, but the company can de-monetize a channel for several reasons. It’s unclear what occurred in regards to Aghdam’s content.
Her father said it was unclear when his daughter obtained the gun. It’s also unclear if the family knew about Aghdam’s shooting intentions.
Barberini told Fox News he’s not jumping to conclusions on whether the police department Aghdam’s father alerted should have reported the 39-year-old Tuesday morning.
“There’s a lot of factors and variables that go into it,” he said. “It depends on how the information was received and how it was relayed and who it was relayed to. So there could be a process there that we’d wanna take a look at rather than jump to any types of conclusions.”
Of the three people wounded, a 36-year-old man was in critical condition, a spokesman for San Francisco General Hospital said. A 32-year-old woman was in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition, the spokesman said.
“The San Bruno Police Department is investigating a motive for this shooting. At this time there is no evidence that the shooter knew the victims of this shooting or that individuals were specifically targeted,” police said in a news release.
