San Bernardino shooting report: 'It was the worst thing imaginable'

FBI agents help investigate 2015&#039;s San Bernardino shooting

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 10 September 2016

The Justice Department and the Police Foundation released a report Friday on 2015's mass shooting by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in San Bernardino, California. The 141-page document describes the attack in detail and recounts the accomplishments and challenges of first responders on the scene.

"It was the worst thing imaginable — some people were quiet, hiding, others were screaming or dying, grabbing at your legs because they wanted us to get them out, but our job at the moment was to keep going," said one officer. "That was the hardest part, stepping over them." The report says three of the shooters' victims made a brave but ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop the attack, and some of the county employees targeted initially believed they were experiencing a realistic emergency training drill.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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