SAN BRUNO, Calif. — The lone remaining hospitalized victim from this week’s YouTube shooting was upgraded to fair condition Thursday as investigators continue piecing together what fueled shooter Nasim Aghdam and whether authorities had a real chance to stop her.
The recuperating victim, a 36-year-old man, has steadily improved since being taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital after the shooting midday Tuesday.
The other two gunshot victims, a 32-year-old woman and a 27-year-old woman, were released after spending less than a day at the hospital.
Meanwhile, the last of the most obvious physical reminders of the shooting at YouTube headquarters disappeared overnight Thursday. A worker could be seen tearing down the police tape that had cordoned off an entrance to the outdoor patio area where Aghdam opened fire, wounding three people before police say she shot and killed herself.
The San Mateo County Coroner’s Office performed an autopsy on Aghdam Wednesday, with the results pending. Authorities have repeatedly said there was immediate visual evidence at the crime scene that she had shot herself.
San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini said Aghdam appears to have been motivated by a recent change in YouTube policy on how uploads earn advertising money on the site, which resulted in many users abruptly losing both revenue and viewers. In her own words in previous videos, Aghdam said the change was akin to censorship of the views she espoused, which were headlined by her vegan and animal-rights activism but also included a heavy dose of dancing and exercise exhibitions.
Also Wednesday, Aghdam’s family, who were contacted by authorities serving search warrants at family homes in the southern Riverside County community of Menifee and in San Diego, continued to insist that they tried to warn Mountain View police of her violent intent hours before the shooting.
“They didn’t do anything and she got killed and three or four more people got hurt. I did the best I can to avoid it but the cops didn’t do their job,” her brother Shahran Aghdam said in an interview.
Mountain View police pushed back against that claim. At 1:40 a.m. Tuesday they observed Aghdam sleeping in her car in the parking lot of a shopping center. They ran a routine license-plate check and learned she had been reported missing by her family Monday after being last seen Saturday.
While Aghdam’s family recalled telling Mountain View officers that she might be in the Bay Area because of her grudge against YouTube, police asserted that at no time during their 20-minute conversation with Aghdam, or in two subsequent phone conversations with her father and brother, was there was any mention of her planning an attack at YouTube, or any potential violence from her.
Police said in a statement that “she in no way met any reason for us to speak with her further or possibly detain her.”
After that early Tuesday police contact, authorities say Aghdam went to a local gun range with the Smith & Wesson 9 mm handgun registered in her name — and which her family was apparently unaware she owned — before heading to YouTube.
Barberini would not specify what range she visited, but several San Bruno police officers on Wednesday spent nearly two hours at Jackson Arms, a South San Francisco range. It opens at 11 a.m. and is about a 10-minute drive from YouTube headquarters.
Investigators declined to say why they were there. Range owner Jason Remolona refused to answer questions about whether Aghdam had been at the range, referring questions to San Bruno police.
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(Emily DeRuy, David DeBolt, Julia Prodis Sulek, Matthias Gafni, Karen D’Souza, George Avalos, Ethan Baron, Stephanie Schulte, Scott Schwebke and Richard De Atley contributed to this report).
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