According to a report titled “Bringing Calm To The Chaos”  compiled by the Department of Justice and the Police Foundation, a policy study group, three people charged the couple when the attack started at the ill fated holiday get together at Syed Farook’s workplace, the Inland Regional Center. The report does not tell us if the brave souls who tried to stop the attack died for their efforts or survived their encounter with the terrorist couple. Fourteen people died in the attack that day when Farook and his wife Tafshin Malik opened fire on Farook’s co-workers. The report also highlights the disgusting irony that the conference room where the massacre occurred was the same one in which his co-workers had hosted a baby shower for Farook only six months prior to the attack. In another ironic, but fortuitous, twist the conference room had also played host to an active shooter drill not long before the terrorists turned the building into a killing field.

Thanks to the prescience of one of his co-workers the likelihood of Farook being involved was an early revelation discovered by a trainee police officer who interviewed the man.

“In fact, it was a rookie cop who got the first piece of crucial information on who the shooters might be. The rookie officer was interviewing one of the survivors who remembered that Farook had left early.

That survivor told the officer that ‘there was just something about the shooter, from his body language to his body composition that seemed familiar’.

The rookie relayed this information to his father, a police sergeant, and the department began tracking down all of the Syed Farooks in the area – of which there were multiple. Other witnesses recalled seeing a black SUV flee the property. A police analyst reckoned the vehicle may have been rented, and that’s where they struck gold. The Farooks had indeed rented a car.”

Thank goodness that this gentleman had the presence of mind to recognize his coworkers affect and physical makeup since he and his cowardly wife covered themselves up during the massacre. During the attack the Farook and Malik were armed with 2,400 rounds of ammunition and a bag filled with pipe bombs that did not discharge and was, shockingly, found six hours after the attack had happened. The video below from the night of the attack calls to mind the incredible chaos of the scene.

Some of the first police at the scene recalled how hard it was for them to go into the building to try to find the shooters.

“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,’ a patrol officer said, according to the report. ‘That was the hardest part, stepping over them.”

 

I cannot imagine how these brave men handled the stress of having to literally step over injured people who are desperate to escape their present circumstances lest the animals who shot them come back to finish the job. Luckily for those people, two wonderful things had taken place. 175 officers, on duty and off, responded to the call and arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting started and Farook and Malik were cowards who did not want to face down a massive police response so they had fled the scene only to meet their fate a few hours later at the hands of other brave officers.

We may never find out the identities of those brave souls who charged forth to stop the terror attack in San Bernardino that fateful winter day last year. We may never know if they lived or died in their attempt. We can all pray for them though and wish them peace if they are still among us and wish them everlasting love if they are not. For surely, if anyone were to go to heaven it is souls like them.