A friend of one of the shooters in the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty to buying the weaponry used in the massacre and planning to carry out other stunning acts of violence, court records show.
Enrique Marquez Jr., 25, of Riverside, Calif., signed documents agreeing to plead guilty to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and making false statements in connection with the acquisition of a firearm – federal counts that carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. He is scheduled to appear before a federal judge in California at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday.
Marquez is the former neighbor and a longtime friend of Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino County Health Department employee who, along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and injured 22 in a shooting at the Inland Regional Center in December 2015. Marquez was not present during the attack and told the FBI that he had no prior knowledge of it. But he admitted that he bought two rifles for Farook that were used in the shooting, as well as a bottle of explosive powder that investigators seized from Farook’s home.
Farook and his wife were killed in a shootout with police after the attack. Marquez, after hearing news reports about what had happened, called 911 to say that he believed his guns had been used in the incident. He was checked into a hospital and later charged with federal crimes.
In his plea agreement, Marquez admitted that he and Farook had developed other terrorist plots years earlier that they ultimately never carried out. They envisioned, for example, throwing pipe bombs into a cafeteria at Riverside City College, where they had once been students. They also had plotted to throw bombs onto California State Route 91 during rush hour and then to open fire on the stopped cars – Farook moving vehicle to vehicle, with Marquez shooting from the nearby hills.
It was around the time of those plots that Marquez purchased the rifles for Farook that would ultimately be used in the 2015 shooting. Marquez admitted that he had lied on federal forms by claiming that the guns were for himself.
“This defendant collaborated with and purchased weapons for a man who carried out the devastating December 2, 2015, terrorist attack that took the lives of 14 innocent people, wounded nearly two dozen, and impacted our entire nation,” U.S. attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a statement. “While his earlier plans to attack a school and a freeway were not executed, the planning clearly laid the foundation for the 2015 attack on the Inland Regional Center.”
Prosecutors have aggressively pursued cases against those tied with the San Bernardino attackers. Syed Raheel Farook, Farook’s brother; Tatiana Farook, who is Syed Raheel Farook’s wife; and Mariya Chernykh, who is Tatiana Farook’s sister, pleaded guilty earlier this year to immigration fraud charges and admitted to being part of a conspiracy in which Chernykh paid Marquez to enter into a bogus marriage with her, prosecutors said.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Matt Zapotosky
