SAN FRANCISCO, April 3 (Xinhua) -- A woman shot and injured at least three people with a handgun at the headquarters of the world's largest online video network in California Tuesday afternoon before she died from self-inflicted wounds, authorities said.
Police identified the woman suspect as Nasim Aghdam, a 38-year-old YouTube user, who entered an open courtyard at YouTube's campus at lunchtime, shooting and wounding three people, one critically, before she took her own life.
The Sheriff's Office of San Bruno, a city about 19 km south of downtown San Francisco, issued a statement Tuesday evening, saying the shooting took place at around 12:48 p.m. local time (2048 GMT) in an outdoor cafe on the grounds of the facility and police officers arrived at the scene two minutes after receiving numerous 911 calls about the shooting.
"A total of four people were transported to local hospitals, three of which had gunshot wounds," and an initial search of the YouTube building "located a deceased female inside with a possible self-inflicted gunshot wound," said the police statement.
San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters at the scene earlier that the female suspect appeared to have shot herself after injuring the three other people.
Local news outlet CBS SF BayArea quoted unnamed sources as saying that a 9MM weapon was used in the shooting and one of those injured was the woman's estranged boyfriend.
"Two females and one male. We have a 32-year-old female who is in serious condition, a 27-year-old female in fair condition, and a 36-year-old male in critical condition," said Brent Andrew, spokesman for Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
The shooting triggered huge panic and chaos in the building of YouTube, which houses some 1,700 employees.
"I heard some yelling and I saw somebody down on his back with a red spot on his stomach," Zach Voorhies, a senior software engineer at YouTube, told local media.
Another YouTube employee said she saw the woman shooter pointing the handgun during the incident.
"And she was firing her gun and I just said 'Shooter! and everybody started running," the witness recounted.
The Bay Area News Group quoted the female shooter's father as saying that she got very angry with YouTube because it stopped paying her for videos she posted on its website.
She "hated" the company because YouTube had stopped paying her for the content she posted on the site, where YouTube users can receive payment for advertisements accompanying their videos, her father said.
He added that the family did not know that Aghdam owned a gun, which he guessed was probably bought recently.
Google, the parent company of YouTube, said in a statement earlier that it was actively coordinating with local authorities and hospitals.
"Our security team has been working closely with authorities to evacuate the buildings and ensure the safety of employees in the area," it said.
"There are no words to describe how horrible it was to have an active shooter @YouTube today," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tweeted.
Tuesday's incident was one of the worst in gun-related violence in the past two months since the massacre in a high school in the state of Florida in February, when 17 people were shot to death including many students on campus.
The bloodshed at the YouTube headquarters highlighted the seriousness of gun violence in the United States, and many took to social media to express their outrage.
"The YouTube HQ shooting is proof that this is NOT just schools. Our country has a GUN problem. End of story," a high school girl Jaclyn Corin tweeted.
Another Twitter user called Alan Vargas tweeted: "58 shootings have already occurred in 2018. America has a gun violence problem."
A 2014 report by the U.S. Federal Investigation Bureau said a total of 160 massive shooting incidents had occurred between 2000 and 2013, among which six women shooters were involved.