San Diego police on Friday released a preliminary timeline laying out details of their response on the day two teenagers stormed a Clairemont mosque and killed three people earlier this week — from the first 911 call reporting a runaway teen to the suspected shooters being found dead.
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It reveals the increasingly frantic hunt for Cain Lee Clark, 17, who’d driven off from his San Diego home with a friend, both dressed in camouflage and possibly armed.
Police say Clark and friend Caleb Vazquez, 18, fatally shot three men outside the Islamic Center of San Diego late Monday morning before driving several blocks away and killing themselves.
The preliminary timeline offers insight into what police knew and when they knew it, and details their response as concerns of potential for acts of violence grew.
After learning the runaway teen had left a possible suicide note and may have had more guns than initially thought, they turned to technology, shared information to all dispatch centers countywide and looped in a federal threat assessment task force.
San Diego Police Department’s timeline of events:
After calling the police non-emergency line, Clark’s mother calls 911 to report him missing. The high school senior was supposed to take final exams that day, but he’d left at 6:24 a.m. with a man unknown to her, maybe named Caleb. Both wore camouflage, and a gun was missing from the home. Police classify the matter as a runaway juvenile (Priority 2) and share the information with officers. The mother is advised to call back with updates.
The mother calls back. More weapons are missing, she said, and she reports finding a possible suicide note near “threatening, hate-filled writings” on Clark’s computer.
Clark was an online student at iHigh Virtual Academy but had a connection to nearby Madison High School. Out of caution, San Diego police notify the San Diego Unified School District police, who already have officers on the campus.
The department bumps the call to a higher-priority response (Priority 1) due to the potential for violence.
Two patrol officers and a sergeant head to the Clark home.
San Diego police share information about the matter with law enforcement across the county.
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The department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit and Threat Management Unit are looped in, as is the San Diego Law Enforcement Coordination Center, the region’s threat assessment center. Investigators start working on a “suspicious activity report” for the missing teen and start looking into his companion, still only known by his first name.
Officers arrive at the Clark home and learn that Clark and his companion may have written a suicide pact.
Clark’s vehicle is picked up by the police department’s mounted license plate readers, headed east in Mission Valley. Officers are dispatched.
Officers are sent to check a store in Mission Valley that Clark’s mother said her son liked.
Calls come in reporting shots fired at the Islamic Center of San Diego. The call is elevated to the highest-priority type of call, Priority 0, and triggers a countywide response.
The first officers arrive at the Islamic Center.
Shots are reported a few blocks away on Salerno Street. A landscaper at the location was shot at.
Clark and Vazquez are found dead in Clark’s SUV a few blocks away on Hatton Street.
In releasing the timeline, police noted that, like departments nationwide, it faces a staffing shortage. “We understand why people would ask whether staffing levels played a role in this week’s tragedy, and that will be a part of our ongoing review,” the department said in a news release Friday.
It also noted that over the last five years, it has received an average of nearly 1,900 calls a year reporting runaway juveniles.
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