SAN DIEGO — As two teenagers stormed a San Diego mosque, livestreaming from a camera on a helmet, authorities say a 17-year-old girl was in North Carolina, watching, recording. Prosecutors allege she not only failed to warn authorities about the planned attack, but she had also agreed to disseminate both the recorded footage and the shooters’ hate-filled manifesto.

Sarah Santiago was more than 2,000 miles away when three men died at the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18, but she was charged this week with murder in their deaths, even though authorities have not accused her of pulling a trigger or even providing a bullet. The girl, also charged with conspiracy, is being tried as an adult.

Those charges are filed in North Carolina, where the girl lives, not California, the site of the attack.

Asked why the girl is not being tried in California, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan did not say whether her office reviewed the case, but noted there is a more direct path to trying a minor as an adult in North Carolina.

“Our system in California would not allow for the same level of accountability in this instance as the criminal system in North Carolina will allow,” Stephan said.

“It would be ideal that all prosecutions related to these hate-inspired killings be handled in San Diego,” she said. “However, it is important that justice be attained for the victims to the greatest extent possible. In this particular prosecution, justice will be served through the court in North Carolina.”

Stephan said she was limited in what she could say so as not to jeopardize a potential prosecution, and said the investigation involves agencies across multiple jurisdictions. She said her office is still “actively working with our law enforcement partners to examine this heinous crime from every angle to determine whether there are individuals who can be held criminally liable for their involvement.”

This is the first prosecution filed in the incident. The shooters, Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, were found dead in a car a short distance from the mosque in a double-suicide or murder-suicide.

On May 18, the teens, apparently radicalized online by hate, arrived at the Islamic Center in Clairemont. About 140 people were there, many of them young children attending school. Armed and wearing GoPro cameras, the teens killed three congregants, including a security guard who engaged them in a gunfight.

Investigators came to learn that three people had been watching the livestream, including a female somewhere in the Eastern time zone. Santiago was later arrested.

The indictment filed in Winston-Salem, where Santiago lives, alleges she aided and abetted in murder by agreeing to record the livestream, then disseminate it and the manifesto that purportedly justifies the attack. The charges also allege she bought a patch bearing a Nazi-linked symbol and sent it to Vazquez, who wore it during the attack.

Santiago’s attorney said that his client is innocent of the charges.

“The allegations are that my client did aid and abet these heinous crimes. The questions as yet unanswered — how and when,” defense attorney Alan Doorasamy Sr. said.

He said the two gunmen “certainly did not need any third party advising, instigating, encouragement, procuring or help to commit these crimes from anyone. Their manifesto will testify posthumously against them on this issue.”

Trying a minor as an adult

In North Carolina, a 17-year-old can be charged as an adult from the start.

Not so in California, where the law requires that a criminal case for anyone under 18 start in juvenile court. If prosecutors want to transfer the case to adult court, they must petition a judge to hold a hearing to evaluate the matter. Under the law, the court must “find by clear and convincing evidence that the minor is not amenable to rehabilitation” in the juvenile system.

The transfer request is an “arduous and cumbersome process,” San Diego defense attorney Jan Ronis said. And at the end of it, it’s possible that a judge will find the teen is better off staying in juvenile court.

Still, transfers to the adult court do happen. Late last month, a youth who’d been found guilty of murder was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in the 2024 Oak Park shooting death of a cannabis delivery driver who the teen and an accomplice had planned to rob. The youth was 16 at the time of the killing.

With the understanding that a teenager’s brain is not fully developed, California has made several reforms to the law regarding juvenile offenders, including creating what is known as “youthful offender parole.” People sentenced to at least 15 years for a crime they committed before age 26 may be eligible for an earlier parole hearing. An example of that happened last month, when a woman who was a teenager in 2007 when she teamed with her sibling to kill their stepfather in his San Diego home was found suitable for parole.

Legal experts the Union-Tribune spoke with said trying Santiago in federal court might have been an option, but all noted that, like California, the case starts on the juvenile side, which loses jurisdiction of the offender at age 21. To try a minor as an adult, San Diego defense attorney Danielle Iredale said, federal prosecutors have to produce enough evidence and argument to convince a judge to transfer the case out of juvenile jurisdiction.

And when it comes to trying juveniles in federal court, there is a preference for funneling the case toward state court. “The presumption is always against federal prosecution if the federal government’s interests can be adequately served by the state prosecution,” said University of San Diego School of Law professor Donald Dripps.

Sometimes it goes the other way. Two 15-year-olds were hired shooters in a cartel-linked assassination attempt in Chula Vista that left one of their accomplices dead. Authorities alleged the cartel intentionally hired the teens because, since they were younger than 16, they could not be charged as adults in California. Federal prosecutors stepped in and cleared the hurdle to get the pair tried as adults.

The teens later pleaded guilty to murder in aid of racketeering and attempted murder in aid of racketeering, and were each sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

The law in North Carolina

Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill announced earlier this week that his office had secured an indictment after local and federal law enforcement officials approached his office about the case.

The state law Santiago is being charged under is “clear,” O’Neill told reporters. “A person may be guilty of a crime, although he or she personally does not do any of the acts necessary to constitute the crime. A person who aids and abets another to commit a crime is guilty of that crime,” he said.

He added that North Carolina courts have held that even though a person is not actually present during the commission of the crime, the person may be an aider or abettor “if he or she shares the same criminal intent of the perpetrator, and if during the commission of the crime he or she is in a position to render any aid necessary. So she didn’t have to be in California. She’s in our jurisdiction.”

Aiding and abetting or accessory theories of liability are “extremely broad” in North Carolina, said professor Ronald Wright of Wake Forest University School of Law, which is in Winston-Salem.

He said the prosecution will have to show the girl did something that aided the suspected shooters, as authorities have alleged. “I think the theory here is that what she did to help was she said, ‘I will record you, and I’ll also send you a patch to put on your clothing, and that will make you famous, and once you have finished the crime, I will distribute your manifesto,” he said.

The professor said there is a lot of case law in North Carolina that that sort of alleged “cheerleading” would be enough to show aiding and abetting. “If you express the sort of support that would make it more likely that they will carry through with their plan, then that would be enough,” Wright said.

Wright said his search of North Carolina case law turned up no cases in which a person was charged in North Carolina with offering assistance before a murder that happened in another state. “That’s a new fact pattern as far as I can tell,” the professor said.

He said the girl’s defense attorney might argue that the case should be dropped in North Carolina, and that it belongs in California where the killings occurred.

Filing murder charges in California under a similar theory of aiding and abetting might have been possible, USD law professor Dripps said. “Jurisdiction follows the bullet,” he noted.

What will a jury think?

Wherever the case is tried, there is the question of whether the person charged really believed the rampage would actually happen, Dripps said.

“It’s not uncommon in some of these cases where it’s just high talk from young people who really don’t understand what they’re talking about — and then somebody goes ahead and follows through on it,” he said.

That, he said, would be a question for the jury to tackle.

San Diego defense attorney Kerry Armstrong — who said aiding and abetting laws are similar in the two states — noted that it’s impossible to know what a jury might do. “The whole thing was just horrific,” he said. “But her role in it, I just don’t know if it really rises to the level of aiding and abetting beyond a reasonable doubt.”

His assessment came with the caveat that not a lot of detail about her alleged role has been released.

The online court docket indicates Santiago made her first appearance in court on Aug. 17. She was denied bond. Her next court appearance is set for Sept. 21.

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