Defence seeks details in North Carolina teen's mosque attack aiding case

The lawyer for a North Carolina teenager accused of aiding the gunmen behind a deadly attack on a San Diego mosque told a court on Monday that prosecutors have not supplied enough detail for him to defend her.

Sarah Santiago, 17, is charged as an adult with three counts of murder by aiding and abetting and one count of conspiracy. Prosecutors allege she helped California teenagers Cain Clark and Caleb Vazquez, who shot and killed three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18 before taking their own lives.

According to the prosecution, Santiago agreed in advance to record and distribute a livestream of the attack and to spread the shooters' white-supremacist writings. She is also accused of buying a patch bearing a white-supremacist symbol and sending it to one of the gunmen to wear during the attack.

Her attorney, Alan Doorasamy, said the state has yet to provide information about how or on what dates Santiago allegedly communicated with the shooters, nor details of the alleged agreement to record and disseminate the livestream. He filed a formal request for the information, known as a bill of particulars, on Friday. A judge scheduled a hearing on the motion for Wednesday.

The motion does not seek to compel the prosecutor's office to hand over evidence, but rather to clarify the allegations against Santiago. Prosecutors have not yet responded to the request, and the Forsyth County District Attorney's Office did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Monday.

"She needs to know why she was arrested," Doorasamy said outside the courthouse. "She's a child. Of course she's very scared and she's worried, but she's done nothing wrong."

Santiago was arrested late last month and is being held without bail. Under North Carolina law, a conviction on the aiding-and-abetting charges carries the same penalties as if the defendant had carried out the attack.

Clark, 17, and Vazquez, 18, entered the Islamic Center on May 18 before a security guard drove them back outside in an exchange of gunfire and initiated a lockdown, helping to protect 140 children nearby. The pair killed the guard, Amin Abdullah, and two other men before killing themselves in a nearby vehicle.

They left behind writings filled with hostility toward a wide range of people and cited the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 as a model. Authorities said Clark and Vazquez also planned further attacks on a Jewish temple and on Black students at a high school. Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O'Neill credited the guard and other victims at the mosque with saving countless lives.

In a written statement, Vazquez's family said he was on the autism spectrum and had grown to resent parts of his identity. The family said it believed those factors, together with exposure to hateful rhetoric online, contributed to his radicalization.