Active shooter at YouTube HQ wounded three before killing herself

By published

On April 3 at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, police responded to multiple 911 calls regarding a possible active shooter in the area.

KRON4, a San Franciso-based news network, reports that one witness heard 20 different shots at one point, and at 1:00 PM local time that day, the San Bruno Poice Department tweeted that residents should stay away from 901 Cherry Ave. due to "police activity."

Product Manager Todd Sherman had an ongoing thread about his personal encounter, with another employee (Vadim Lavrusik) saying that they heard shots and was then barricaded inside a room with their coworkers.

Hours after this story broke, it was discovered that the shooter was Nasim Najafi Aghdam – a female who apparently had something of a grudge against YouTube due to the company censoring the videos she uploaded to the site.

Aghdam injured three people during the shooting before she was also deceased due to a self-inflicted wound.

Joe Maring
Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.
51 Comments
  • Soooooo much unverified info. Thanks for reporting what you read on twitter instead of waiting to get concrete facts.
  • First time reading breaking news huh?
  • There's a difference between breaking news... and breaking speculation.
  • Speculation.. Riiiight... There is a difference between comprehension and assumption.
  • Clearly
  • Yet you still fail to understand the difference.
  • You might to look at the live feed before huffing and puffing. Pretty sure the coroner heading there can verify more than you rant.
  • Geesh...
  • Your a complete idiots, go dress up like Hilary and jump off a building
  • Wow...
  • Someone didn't take their dulcolax this morning... Seriously, the op was being a bit of a dick, but this a story about people fighting for their lives after being gunned down, and you're telling someone to jump off a building? Get your shít together, dude.
  • I've noticed a trend with Trump supporters, spelling, and grammar.
  • The word "supporters" should be possessive and not followed by a comma. Also, the comma before "and" should be deleted as there are only two items. Just saying..
  • +10 power hit
  • You either need to remove one of those full stops (periods, if you're American), or add a third and make it an ellipses. This is fun, who's next?
  • He could just as easily have meant a trend involving three things: Trump supporters, spelling, and grammar. In that case, the sentence was properly written.
  • You mean they spell correctly and use correct grammar? I agree!
  • How am I a dick? When reporting something relatively important like a public shooting, you should probably have your facts straight. Or in this case, have some actual facts. I'm tired of the media 'reporting' what they see on twitter as absolute truth. If there was a source in YouTube HQ that had a video of the shooter or a tweet that specifically said "I just saw someone with a gun shooting at people", I wouldn't have commented. Instead, it's a bunch of speculative tweets about hearing gunfire from people that have probably never heard a gun in real life. I'm pretty sure this website has published articles bashing Facebook or Google for enabling the spread of fake news, yet just like every other media outlet, they jump to conclusions based on very limited information just so they can be one of the first to break the story and get web traffic.
  • I didn't say you are a dick, I said you "were being a bit of a dick". There's a subtle but very real difference. I'd think you'd have a bigger issue with the guy who told you to dress in a pastel suit and jump off a building. But, whatever. Gotta pick your battles i guess.
  • Based on the way these comments are threaded, I couldn't quite tell if he was talking to me. Plus he sounded like a complete looney toon, so I disregarded the comment entirely.
  • A female shooter??! Awesome
  • It does break the mold, doesn't it...
  • We've had two female prime minister's here in the UK. The main thing that's been demonstrated is that women she capable of being just as horrific as men.
  • Nasty stuff... Hope the victims pull through. I wonder what her motivation was? The YouTube office seems too specific to be a random rampage...
  • News stated it was a domestic dispute. Female shot her boyfriend.
  • Was it fox? Cause that's wrong. Probably a guess based entirely on misogyny.
  • CNN also initially reported it as domestic, but the latest theory is that she was angry about not being paid by YouTube and having age restrictions placed on some of her videos.
  • Not what the news is reporting...
  • Yeah, that was later updated as wrong info. Apparently it was an upset YouTuber that is no longer monetized and the victims were random.
  • http://www.nasimesabz.com/ This is her site I guess
  • Fake news. This can't possibly be true. YouTube hq is a gun free zone. Stop spreading these lies.
  • A radical vegan, middle eastern, muslim woman shoots up YouTube... In California, where guns are supposed to be regulated out of existence. Sorry, this is hilarious, and so totally predictable.
  • Not that it matters, but you realize that not everyone with a 'funny' name is muslim right? There isn't anything indicating her faith on any of her videos or her website.
  • No, he doesn't realize that. He likes stereotyping.
  • And besides, I never said that her being a Muslim meant that she did this for Allah. It's pretty clear, though, that she thought YouTube was a leftist fascist company, which it is. I just find it funny that all the Democrat talking point check boxes were checked. Muslim, woman, foreigner, vegan 😂, living in Communifornia. Then she had to go blow that whole thing up. Clearly, she was an NRA member. 🤣😂
  • The latest theory is that she was angry that she wasn't making money on her videos because YouTube pulled ads from her channels. As far as I can tell, religion and politics have nothing to do with it. It was all about money.
  • Just because my last name is Wallace doesn't make me Scottish.
  • But are you seven feet tall, and shoot fireballs out of your eyes and lightning bolts out of your arse?
  • Hmm so she use guns and not a bomb and that is predictable. Yeah ok whatever you say.
  • Uhhhh, when the woman herself says that YouTube exists to promote materialism and sexual degeneracy (which, by the way, out of all the things she says, that was the two things I could agree on), and she has as a background to her own website the colors of the Iranian flag, yeah, she's a Muslim. You're just too stupid (intentionally or otherwise) to know better.
  • Not every Iranian is a muslim. It takes a lot more to be a muslim then just the origins. Besides that she don't like she's a muslim from her clothing and her views.
  • Best wishes and prayers for all of the You Tube employees involved. Speedy recovery to all.
  • How can this person who killed herself be called an "active shooter"? This headline doesn't make any sense. Just jumping on the jargon bandwagon like other mindless media drones.
  • When the article was originally written, she was an active shooter. It's since been updated with info including that she killed herself. Also, she was an active shooter when she wondered those three people in the title. You're just being pedantic, and not doing a particularly good job at it.
  • Pedantic? Yeah, because precision and attention to detail aren't important when reporting news.
  • Hopes for a speedy and full recovery for those injured.
  • She wasa Muslim....http://www.tmz.com/2018/04/03/youtube-shooter-nasim-aghdam-censor-discri...
  • Are you sure? Her family immigrated from Iran, she speaks Farsi in her vids and at times in her vids has worn clothing typical of the region... but none of the reports I've seen confirm she was actually a practicing/participating Muslim. Authorities do not believe this incident has any ties to terrorist or religious groups. They aren't saying whether or not she had prior mental issues with depression, anxiety, self-worth and esteem. Or at least the media is not publishing this information yet. Its possible she does and the youtube censorship / demonitization pushed her over a cliff. The entire monetization of Youtube, and its content screening algorithm has the entire creator fan-base going bat-crazy... raging pissed for several months now. It was only a matter of time before someone went overboard like this. Some of the Pro-2nd, firearm-centric channels have turned to pron hub to host videos... Citing the open minded uncensored creation allowed there.
  • She was mad that YouTube was censoring her videos. Yet I hear conservatives complain about them being censored on YouTube all the tine, oh the irony.
  • Yet, it isn't Conservatives shooting up YouTube now, is it? No, it was a Middle Eastern, Muslim, Vegan, leftist woman. She also got her gun legally, in California, and she shot multiple people, without an AR-15, and without bump stocks! I don't think you know much at all. At least not nearly as much as you act like you do.
  • "Aghdam injured three people during the shooting before she was also deceased due to a self-inflicted wound." Who hired this guy?