Warning: this article includes violent and disturbing material
Worried about her son and the safety of others, 17-year-old Cain Clark’s mother called police at 9:42 am on Monday morning, warning that the teenager was suicidal and that her car was missing, along with “several weapons.” By 11:40 am, Clark was entering the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD) with 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez, both dressed in camouflage and carrying loaded firearms.
Together, the pair murdered three people before dying of self-inflicted gunshot wounds in a parked car only a little way from the mosque. One of the victims was a facility security guard, Amin Abdullah, who police credited with saving the lives of multiple others that day. The two other victims were identified as Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad.
Details are still emerging as a manifesto written by the two perpetrators is circulating online, aligning them with a violent, neo-Nazi ideological strand and conspiracy theories like the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that alleges that political elites in the United States are secretly conspiring to “replace” the “native” white population with non-white immigrants.
Gruesome images and videos showing portions of the shooting have been shared across social media, including footage alleged to be from a body camera worn by one of the perpetrators. This footage shows what is likely the suspects’ entry and much of the assault against the Islamic Center. It ends as the pair return to a vehicle, where one shoots his partner and then himself.
According to the FBI, a recovered manifesto showed “these subjects did not discriminate on who they hated.”
While more information about the tragedy will likely come to light, the videos and a two-part manifesto, alleged to be written by the teens, detail how a radical and violent form of white supremacy likely inspired the attack.
Attack Footage Emerges
The footage of the attack, appears to be a recording of another phone receiving a video call through the chat application Discord. There is no audio and much of the alleged live stream footage is distorted.
It begins as two men dressed in camouflage run through the ICSD parking lot and into the front doors. The camera is tilted down towards the ground, likely attached to one of the perpetrator’s helmets. After entering the building, the pair stops and one appears to fire a rifle back outside the door.
After this exchange, the shooter wearing the camera kneels and appears to clear a stoppage in his rifle before continuing through the interior hallways of the building. The individual appears to fire his rifle again, though the angle of the camera does not show the target.
The recording then appears to jump forward in time. It is not clear how much times passes, but the two teens are shown exiting the building into the parking lot. One draws a handgun and fires at an unknown target also not shown on camera. A body is briefly seen bleeding on the ground before the gunmen enter their vehicle.
The pair appear to use their firearms again from inside the vehicle, though without audio, it is difficult to tell if the weapons are firing or merely being adjusted. Police reports indicate that a final salvo was fired towards a gardener, who thankfully was uninjured.
The two perpetrators remove some of their gear, including placing the camera onto the car’s dashboard, showing their faces in the footage for the first time. They appear to talk for several minutes, though there is no audio in the recording.
In the footage, Vazquez places his head against the barrel of Clark’s gun, which appears to be a pump-action shotgun. The pair continue to talk silently until Clark produces a handgun. He appears to shoot his partner and then turns the gun on himself.
Attack videos, like the one recorded at the ICSD, are often shared and repurposed by supporters for the purpose of spreading propaganda and inspiring the next attacker. The videos also contain references that call back to previous attacks.
Inspired by the Christchurch Shooter
The most sinister and startling aspect of this violence is the similarity between this attack and Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of a 2019 massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand. The San Diego shooters’ manifesto is dedicated to Tarrant. Tarrant killed 51 people at two mosques, live streaming the carnage on Facebook as it unfolded. Tarrant carried out his attacks while wearing a patch with a Sonnenrad printed on it on the plate carrier he wore into the attack. The black Sonnenrad is a sunwheel symbol popularized by Heinrich Himmler and the Nazi SS in the 1930s.
Vazquez and Clark appear in the video to both be wearing versions of the Sonnenrad symbol on their clothing. In another move also likely meant as a reference to Tarrant, the pair wrote a series of names and slogans over the weapons used during the ICSD attack. Tarrant did the same in 2019, and since has inspired other shooters to emulate this practice. This includes Payton Gendron, who killed 10 people and injured three others at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood on May 14, 2022. Gendron also wore a Sonnenrad patch during his attack and heavily plagiarized his manifesto from others.
Clear images showing the weapons used in the attack at ICSD have not been released at this time, but what is visible in the footage shows symbols and phrases associated with white supremacy. This includes well-known symbols like the swastika and clear calls to violence like “Race War Now.”
The perpetrators also wore a distinct type of German camouflage called flektarn. During the videos, one of the attackers wears a trefoil symbol, commonly used to warn of radioactive materials. Flektarn and the trefoil are both commonly associated with a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division, which was linked to five murders in the U.S. and futher violence abroad.
While the group disbanded in 2020, the organization promoted a decentralized approach to building a whites-only society using a philosophy called militant accelerationism, a violent, far-right ideology rooted in the idea that societal collapse is not only inevitable, but desirable and necessary for building a fascist, white ethnostate. Its followers believe that this process can be sped up, or accelerated, through acts of violence that increase existing social divisions.
Manifesto Circulates Online
Since the attack, a copy of a manifesto, allegedly the final messages left by the two perpetrators, has begun to circulate online. Law enforcement has reported finding a manifesto during searches of three properties related to the perpetrators, and the document being circulated online is being investigated to confirm its authenticity, but is believed to have been written by the attackers.
The document paints a grim picture of young men who worshipped some of the worst white supremacist killers in modern history.
The document opens with the San Diego perpetrators referring to themselves as the “Sons of Tarrant,” directly linking their attack to the Christchurch massacre.
The alleged manifesto is broken into two sections, with one attributed to Vazquez and the other to Clark.
In the opening section written by Vazquez, he opens by quoting other manifestos that include Gendron and Tarrant, before moving into antisemitic conspiracy theories blaming Jewish people for “war, famine, exploitation of children, rise in degeneracy, infighting of peoples, political killings, the separation of family, the departure from the Church, the White race’s replacement, mass immigration, central banking systems, and so on.”
Some paragraphs and entire sections of the text are marked “[UNFINISHED]” by the authors, including in the several pages dedicated to blaming Jews, before moving onto a section dedicated to demonizing women labelled the “Incel experience.” Incels, short for “involuntary celibate,” are part of a misogynistic ideology that has inspired numerous mass casualty attacks.
Both shooters espouse beliefs in the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which purports that white people are intentionally being “replaced” by non-white migrants, typically Muslims and Latinos. Vasquez appears to ascribe to an antisemitic version of the conspiracy, in which Jews are the drivers behind white people’s so-called “replacement.” In a section titled “The Bioweapons of the K**es,” Vasquez describes Muslims as “invaders” who will “assert dominance and lay claim to the land,” “[demand] Sharia law,” and “only [vote] for their own in positions of power.” Claims of “invasion” and voting as an ethnic bloc are core tenets of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory — commonly touted by other mass shooters and prominent politicians alike.
The pair’s writing is laden with homophobia, transphobia, anti-Black, and anti-immigrant statements, while also supporting numerous other attackers who carried out violence on behalf of the white supremacist movement. One section includes a reading list, where books like Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and William Luther Pierce’s race war novel The Turner Diaries, which inspired the Oklahoma City bombing, are recommended reading alongside lesser known books about accelerationism.
In the document, the pair extol their support for militant accelerationism and groups associated with the movement.
“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations, there are many I support,” part of the manifesto attributed to Vazquez reads. “I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea.”
Terrorgram and The Base are both neo-Nazi networks that support violence as a means of creating a white ethnostate. In January 2025, the U.S. State Department designated Terrorgram as a foreign terrorist organization.
Vasquez recommended reading Tarrant’s manifesto, calling it the “most important and imperative” thing to read.
“The white race is dying and getting replaced by subhuman animals as we speak. This is because the k**es hate us,” Vazquez writes, invoking the “Great Replacement.”
The section attributed to Clark also promotes the idea that Europeans are being replaced, closing his tirade with “There are no non-combatants in a war for survival. Stand up and face your future. Show no mercy. Kill them all.”
Both openly embrace the “collapse of society” as the only solution.
