{"id":322825,"date":"2026-05-19T13:03:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322825\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:03:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T13:03:27","slug":"father-of-8-security-guard-hailed-as-hero-in-san-diego-mosque-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/322825\/","title":{"rendered":"Father-of-8 security guard hailed as hero in San Diego mosque shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A mosque security guard is being remembered for courageous actions that authorities say saved lives in the attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego that left three people dead.<\/p>\n

The security guard was Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Diego (CAIR-SD) Tazheen Nizam told the BBC.<\/p>\n

“It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference on Monday. “Undoubtedly, he saved lives today.”<\/p>\n

Abdullah and two others – who CAIR-SD named as Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad – were killed by two yet-to-be-identified teenage attackers who later took their own lives.<\/p>\n

People who knew Abdullah told US media he looked after the community. Others have taken to social media to describe him as “the nicest man you’ll ever meet”.<\/p>\n

The mosque called him “a courageous man who put himself on the line of the safety of others, who even in his last moments did not stop protecting our community”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

[Getty Images]<\/p>\n

A friend of the family told the Associated Press that Abdullah was well-known at the mosque and had worked there for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

“He wanted to defend the innocent so he decided to become a security guard,” Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq, told the AP.<\/p>\n

Sam Hamideh knew Abdullah through the mosque and told the BBC’s US partner CBS News the security guard would be remembered for his kindness.<\/p>\n

“It didn’t matter who walked up… any random person could just walk up and, like, [Abdullah] would greet them, make sure they are OK,” Hamideh said. “Whether they were homeless off the street looking for something, whether it was a child or elderly.”<\/p>\n

The deadly shooting unfolded on Monday after the mother of one of the two alleged attackers called police to report that her son had run away with a friend and may be suicidal.<\/p>\n

Hours later, as police were searching for the two teenagers, authorities found three victims with gunshot wounds outside the Islamic Center of San Diego, including Abdullah.<\/p>\n

Shortly after, police found the two suspects – aged 17 and 18 – dead of self-inflicted wounds in a vehicle blocks away from the mosque.<\/p>\n

The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime, Wahl said, noting that “hate rhetoric” was involved.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/p>\n

[BBC]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mosque security guard is being remembered for courageous actions that authorities say saved lives in the attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[134481,134404,134115,74,76,75,20305,134480,134479],"class_list":["post-322825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-abdullah","tag-amin-abdullah","tag-chief-scott-wahl","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-security-guard","tag-shaykh-uthman-ibn-farooq","tag-the-council-on-american-islamic-relations-san-diego"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}