FirstAlerts

North Carolina teen charged with murder in San Diego mosque shooting

Sarah Lindsay Santiago, 17, faces three counts of first-degree murder and a conspiracy charge in the May 18 attack that killed three people.

2 reports on this incident · first at Aug 31, 2026, 4:23 p.m. ET

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 31, 2026, 7:35 a.m. ETUpdated Sep 6, 2026, 10:12 p.m. ET
A 17-year-old North Carolina girl, Sarah Lindsay Santiago, has been with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in connection with the May 18 shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego that left three people dead, according to the and multiple news reports. The charges were announced on August 31, 2026, as reported by the New York Post, RedState, and CBS News, though Fox LA reported the announcement as September 1, 2026. The case is at the charging stage and has not been resolved. Santiago is but not yet tried; she is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Her attorney said, "," as reported by ABC57. Accounts of the alleged conduct differ. CBS News reports that the government claims the girl recorded a livestream of the shooting and disseminated the attackers' white-supremacist writings, aiding and abetting the murder. Fox 5 DC reports that the government claims Santiago agreed before the shooting occurred that she would record the livestream as the shooters filmed it, disseminate the recording, and release a document written by the attackers, and also allegedly bought a patch with a white-supremacist symbol and sent it to one of the shooters to wear during the attack. The New York Post reports that she .

Earlier reports

  1. Aug 31, 2026, 4:23 p.m. ETFirst report

    North Carolina Woman Charged in San Diego Mosque Shooting

    A North Carolina woman has been charged in connection with a San Diego mosque shooting that left three people dead, according to the New York Post. The charges, announced on August 31, 2026, include three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy.

    The woman is accused of helping the attackers spread their message and publicize the massacre, the New York Post reported. The charges are allegations, and the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The case is at the charging stage and has not been resolved.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 57 Sept 2026, 02:12current

    Added date of the attack (May 18) and clarified the announcement date discrepancy.

  2. Version 43 Sept 2026, 19:22

    Updated to reflect the date discrepancy between sources and added RedState and CBS News as sources for the announcement date.

  3. Version 31 Sept 2026, 12:15

    Updated to reflect the event status as published and clarified the date of the charges.

  4. Version 231 Aug 2026, 22:22

    Added explicit statement that the case is at the charging stage and has not been resolved in the dek and body. No other changes.

  5. Version 131 Aug 2026, 21:29

    First published.

  6. Version 131 Aug 2026, 20:23current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.