YouTube shooter was furious about treatment of her animal rights videos and visited a gun range before attack
Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39, posted videos containing graphic footage of animal abuse, as well as vegan recipes and simple exercises. She became furious after the site stopped running ads on her videos, her father said
An Iranian-born woman who blogged about veganism and warned that the planet was “full of injustice and disease” had accused YouTube of suppressing her videos before she opened fire at the company’s California headquarters on Tuesday, wounding three and killing herself.
Authorities said that the shooter, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39, visited a gun range before she entered a courtyard Tuesday at YouTube's main offices in San Bruno, south of San Francisco, pulled out a handgun and fired several rounds.
In a series of Persian and English-language online postings, Aghdam - an animal rights activist who posted vegan recipes on the site - had railed against YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google.
In some posts, she speaks about herself in heroic terms for surviving in a hostile world. Other pages are adorned with pictures of Aghdam scowling and wearing jewellery of her own design.
“I think I am doing a great job,” she wrote in Persian on her Instagram account. “I have never fallen in love and have never got married.
“I have no physical and psychological diseases. But I live on a planet that is full of injustice and diseases.”
In an interview with The Mercury News, her father said that she had been infuriated by the site’s decision to remove adverts - or “de-monetise” - her videos, some of which included graphic images of animal abuse.