BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bravery of a security guard who was shot dead along with two other worshippers at a San Diego mosque on Monday prevented the attack from being much worse, say police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guard was Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Diego (Cair-SD), Tazheen Nizam, told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told a news conference. “Undoubtedly, he saved lives today.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abdullah and two others – whom Cair-SD named as Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad – were killed by two yet-to-be-identified teenage attackers who then took their own lives, say police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police said on Tuesday that as the suspects ran passed Abdullah at the mosque’s entrance he began shooting, and they returned fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also enacted lockdown procedures and is credited with saving numerous lives, including those of 140 children at the school that is part of the centre, Wahl said at a briefing on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two other victims then drew the attention of the suspects in a parking lot, where they were fatally shot. Wahl said the response that Abdullah initiated “undoubtedly” pushed the suspects to flee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wahl praised all three victims for deterring additional fatalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\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\n\n\n
Nizam, the Cair spokeswoman, told the BBC: “Amin was loved by everybody, he stood there day after day, always smiling, welcoming everybody, welcoming the kids who came to the school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He was a shining light. He is a true hero, a martyr.”<\/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n
“He wanted to defend the innocent so he decided to become a security guard,” Shaykh Uthman Ibn Farooq told the news agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC: The bravery of a security guard who was shot dead along with two other worshippers at a San Diego mosque on Monday prevented the attack from being much worse, say police. The guard was Amin Abdullah, a father of eight, a spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Diego (Cair-SD), Tazheen Nizam, told the BBC. “It’s fair to say his actions were heroic,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told a news conference. “Undoubtedly, he saved lives today.” Abdullah and two others – whom Cair-SD named as Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad – were killed by two yet-to-be-identified teenage… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57762,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57760\/revisions\/57762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}