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Teen charged in San Diego mosque shooting called police day of attack, lawyer says

An image of the Forsyth County courthouse in downtown Winston-Salem.
Courtesy nccourts.gov
Forsyth County Courthouse in Winston-Salem

A Winston-Salem teenager appeared in court Wednesday on murder charges for her alleged involvement in a San Diego mosque shooting.

Sarah Santiago, 17, was arrested at the end of August. The indictments allege she recorded a livestream of the attack that killed three people in May and disseminated the killers’ manifesto.

But in court, Santiago’s lawyer, Alan Doorasamy, argued that the indictments against her shouldn’t have happened without evidence in hand. And so far, he says he hasn’t received any.

The prosecutor, Matthew Breeding, said the delay has to do with the number of agencies involved, including the FBI and San Diego police. He says he expects to have a roughly 100-page summary, with redactions, in the next week or so. The rest, which he says will include hundreds of documents and digital evidence, will take longer.

Breeding even said it sounded like the defense has more information than he does at this point — Doorasamy made a new claim in court that Santiago called law enforcement on the day of the attack.

The judge ordered the prosecution to provide the defense with any evidence it has within the next week, and to answer Doorasamy’s more specific questions about the indictments within 60 days.

Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.