In This Article:
* Shooter believed YouTube restricted views of her videos
* Anger at YouTube motivated shooting, police say
* Police say father did not warn them of potential violence (Adds details from YouTube in company statement)
By Paresh Dave and Heather Somerville
SAN FRANCISCO, April 4 (Reuters) - An Iranian-born woman who blogged about surviving in a world filled with "injustice and diseases" opened fire at YouTube's California headquarters because she was angry at a site she believed was suppressing her videos, police said on Wednesday.
In Persian and English-language online postings, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39, had railed against the video-sharing site owned by Alphabet Inc's Google before wounding three people and killing herself on Tuesday at its offices in San Bruno, just south of San Francisco.
In an English-language video posted to her YouTube account before the channel was deleted on Tuesday, Aghdam said, "I am being discriminated. I am being filtered on YouTube."
"We know that she was upset with YouTube ... that's the motivation," San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters. "Whether that rises to the level of terrorism hopefully will be determined in the next couple of weeks."
The shooting on the corporate campus in California's Silicon Valley came days after Aghdam had a dispute with her family that caused her to leave her San Diego home. On Monday, they reported her missing, police said.
Early the next day, Mountain View police found Aghdam sleeping in her car a few miles from Alphabet's headquarters. She was "calm and cooperative" with the officers she spoke with, made no mention of YouTube and gave no indication she would harm anyone, Mountain View police said.
The San Jose Mercury News quoted Aghdam's father, Ismail Aghdam, as saying he told police that his daughter might go to YouTube's headquarters because she hated the company but Mountain view police disputed that account.
Police said officers had twice spoken with the family after finding her. In an initial call, Aghdam's father said nothing about his daughter posing a threat but then called back to say she had posted vegan videos to YouTube and was angry about something that had been done to them, police said.
"At no point did her father or brother mention anything about potential acts of violence," the statement said.
Efforts to reach Aghdam's relatives by phone were unsuccessful.
However, Los Angeles television station KTLA and other media reported on Wednesday that Aghdam's family in a statement expressed sorrow over the shooting and support for the victims.