The teenagers met online and bonded over shared hatreds. When they realized they both lived in the San Diego area, they met in person.
And when they decided to kill, they apparently livestreamed themselves. A video that they appear to have recorded shows them dressed in camouflage tactical gear, affixed with a white supremacist symbol, as they approached a mosque on Monday and opened fire, killing three people.
San Diego police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Tuesday that the teenagers had been radicalized online and that one of them had access to an arsenal of weapons at home.
After the attack at the Islamic Center of San Diego, investigators discovered a document that laid out their bigoted worldview, Mark Remily, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s San Diego field office, said at a news conference.
Mr. Remily said that in the car in which the teenagers were found dead, investigators discovered “writings and various ideologies outlining religious and racial beliefs of how the world they envision should look. These subjects did not discriminate on who they hated.”
The attack was yet another example of how the combination of alienated young men with access to guns and a hateful online community that welcomes them can lead to a spasm of real-world violence.
While the police in San Diego have not publicly named either suspect, two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter identified them as Cain Clark, 17, a former high school wrestler; and Caleb Vazquez, 18.
Minutes after the Monday afternoon attack, police officers found them dead in a white BMW, along with a gas can bearing Nazi S.S. insignia. The police have said the teenagers died from gunshots, and a video that has appeared online appears to show one shooting the other before turning the gun on himself.
James Canning, a spokesman for the San Diego Unified School District, said Mr. Clark had been scheduled to graduate this year from iHigh Virtual Academy, an online school within the district. Mr. Clark was a member of the wrestling team at Madison High School last year, but had not been involved in extracurricular activities this year, Mr. Canning said. He said that Mr. Clark had not had any disciplinary infractions since elementary school.
The San Diego police had been searching for the teenagers for two hours before the shooting, scouring California’s second largest city after Mr. Clark’s mother called the police and said her son was missing, and possibly suicidal. She also said she couldn’t find several of her guns, that her car was missing and that her son was probably with a friend.
Mr. Remily said on Tuesday that the F.B.I. had searched three homes linked to the teenagers and had confiscated more than 30 guns, including pistols and rifles, as well as ammunition and tactical gear. They even discovered a crossbow at one of the homes. Mr. Remily said the weapons were registered to the parents of one of the suspects.
No one answered the door at the light blue house in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego where Mr. Clark is believed to have lived. A Ford F350 sat in the driveway, near trash barrels and a can for cigarette butts.
Efforts to reach relatives and associates of Mr. Vazquez were unsuccessful Tuesday. A man who answered the door at the family’s duplex in a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood said he would not speak with a reporter. Neighbors said they had seen detectives and police officers at the home overnight and on Tuesday morning.
Two of Mr. Clark’s former wrestling teammates described him on Tuesday as “awkward,” and someone they did not get to know well.
Yael Cruz, a 17-year-old senior at Madison High School, said Mr. Clark had taken online classes, and that their conversations were often about video games. At school on Tuesday, Mr. Cruz said his classmates were in disbelief. He said teachers did not directly address the situation, but offered support for those who needed it.
In the hours after the shooting, a 75-page document began circulating online that appeared to have been written by Mr. Vazquez and Mr. Clark and is similar to what Mr. Remily, the F.B.I. agent, described at the news conference on Tuesday afternoon.
The document was shared on a web forum that is notorious for circulating hateful content. It contains images of Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols — including the one the shooters wore — and describes how the young men were inspired by a man who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. They also cited as inspiration a shooter who carried out a racist massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022.
One of the sections lays out an expansive list of hatreds, attacking Jews, Muslims, gay people, and also includes racist and misogynistic passages. In a section purportedly written by Mr. Vazquez, he complained about being short, blaming his stature for his lack of success with women.
The document lists mass killers, many of whom have been lionized in dark corners of the internet and some who became notorious for streaming their massacres to the web as they committed them.
As the document was surfacing online, so, too, was a video of the attack that appears to have been recorded by the two young perpetrators.
The version of the footage analyzed by The New York Times was not the original copy. The recording shows a second phone, where a video of the attack is playing. There is no audio, and at several points the video cuts out, lags or the users minimize the picture. However, several features visible in the video — including the make and model of the shooters’ vehicle, the interior of the Islamic Center and the streets outside it — indicate that it was likely filmed by the gunmen.
The video shows the two teenagers getting out of a car out with long guns raised, running toward a building, shooting in and around it. A person’s legs and a pool of blood can be seen on a sidewalk.
In all, three men were killed at the mosque: Amin Abdullah, a security guard at the Islamic Center; Mansour Kaziha, manager of the mosque store; and Nader Awad.
The video continues. Back in the car, the camera is pointed at the driver, who aims a handgun at the passenger and fires at least once. Seconds later, he turns the gun toward himself, pulls the trigger and slumps onto the steering wheel.
Pooja Salhotra, Orlando Mayorquín, Devon Lum and Jennifer McKentee contributed reporting.
Tim Arango is a correspondent covering national news. He is based in Los Angeles.
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