A frantic two hours as police struggled to assess threat before San Diego shooters opened fire

SAN DIEGO — The two hours before Monday’s deadly attack at the San Diego Islamic Center were marked by a series of frantic calls by the mother of one of the attackers as short-staffed police struggled to assess the seriousness of the threat and scramble officers to find the gunmen.

The mother of 17-year-old Cain Lee Clark first called police at 9:42 a.m., about two hours before the first reports of an active shooter at the center. Police did not arrive at her home to speak to her until 11:10 a.m., according to sources with access to call logs.

In between that time, the mother had called at least two more times, with greater levels of concern, the sources said. Those calls were enough for police to elevate the incident, more than an hour after the initial call.

It’s unclear exactly what the mother told police during the first call, but police officials have said it came in as a “runaway juvenile,” and was classified as a “Priority 2,” one of the two law enforcement sources said.

Multiple law enforcement officials said the waiting time between the mother’s first call and when an officer was dispatched was on par with similarly classified calls.

According to data recently released by the city in a public records request, the average response time for the department for a Priority 2 was more than two hours as recently as March. The San Diego Police Department had been dealing with staffing shortages, which emerged as an issue earlier this month amid budget talks.

The mother provided more details about her son in the subsequent calls, the sources said, and that prompted police to elevate the case to a Priority 1 call.

A terrorism liaison officer was brought into the case at 10:54 a.m., the sources said, sparking a scramble to find Clark. When the call was upgraded, a patrol car with two officers was sent to the mother’s home. They arrived at 11:10 a.m., the sources said.

By that time, one of the law enforcement sources said, officials at Clark’s school were alerted and data from license plate readers were being scanned for any sign of the stolen car. Police received two hits for the license plate — both prior to the shooting, including one at the Fashion Valley mall about six miles away from Clark’s home. The car was not there by the time an officer arrived, the sources said.

According to recordings of dispatch audio from San Diego police reviewed by The Times, dispatchers told officers in the field at approximately 11:05 a.m. to be on the lookout for a “possible terroristic threat.” The dispatcher reported that a 17-year-old boy named Cain Clark left at 6:30 a.m. from his parents’ house with another teen.

He took a shotgun and additional guns out of his parents’ gun safe, according to dispatch records. “He wrote a note on the computer saying ‘I’m too far gone and this is going to happen anyways,’” the dispatcher said. The teen left in a white BMW X1 and turned his location off on his phone, the recording said.

Clark was described as wearing a camo baseball cap, a camo jacket, black pants and black boots. The second suspect was said to be wearing an army green baseball cap, camo jacket and army green camo cargo pants.

Police officers were interviewing Clark’s mother when the first reports of a shooting at the Islamic center came in at 11:42 a.m.

Clark and Caleb Liam Vazquez, 18, had driven to the mosque with a plan for mass murder. They were briefly repelled by a security guard, who along with two other victims in the parking lot, alerted the center and police to the attack, saving lives. The attackers were later found dead with self-inflicted wounds.

San Diego police declined to add details to the timeline, saying investigators were still sorting it out.

“With such an in-depth investigation, we want to ensure that the information shared remains credible. We are working on our next update that you can expect in the coming days. Thank you for your patience and understanding,” the department said in a statement to The Times. “As you can imagine, there are a lot of details we are working to sort through right now.”

It’s far from clear whether staffing issues played any role in the response to the case. But the issue of police staffing and response times has been an issue of debate in the city.

Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Assn., said in an emailed statement to The Times that his organization has been raising alarms about staffing shortages, cuts to overtime and response times.

Wilson declined to discuss specifics about staffing or specifics about the Monday attack. He referred questions about the incident and staffing to a San Diego Police Department spokesperson.

“Our patrol staffing levels are at historically low levels, which have skyrocketed response times to all-time highs,” Wilson said. “It is not uncommon for staffing levels to be 50% or worse under long-established minimum levels. In addition to the detrimental effects of high response times for the community, our officers are being placed in dangerous situations with little backup and are burning out.”

Wilson said the department currently has 200 vacant positions, plus an additional 100 officers who are in training, or at the academy, and unavailable for service.

Police Department brass has acknowledged that it is often below recommended staffing levels, driven by a personnel shortage that has affected large agencies across the country. The two sources said the department’s northern division — where the mass shooting occurred — had seven officers were assigned to work that area at the time, less than the department’s minimum staffing standard level of 14 officers in that division. Once the incident was elevated to Priority 1, others officers got involved.

In the 2027 draft budget released by the city this month, the Police Department’s top two priorities were recruiting and retaining employees and improving response times.

But the city for years has faced a budget deficit, leading to spending cuts for the Police Department. The budget for fiscal year 2027 has focused on cutting management positions, such as sergeants and lieutenants, in an effort to “keep cops in the field,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said during an interview with CBS 8 San Diego this month.

Wahl said the department is a “couple hundred” officers short of its budget. But, he added, the department is “a thousand police officers short of what we need to handle the call volume we have.”

Over the last few days, police officials have said their understanding of the threat posed by the teens evolved based on information from the mother, who has not responded to requests for comment.

Wahl noted during multiple press briefings that law enforcement’s grasp of the threat that was unfolding “elevated as Mom began to piece together what she was finding,” but officials have not discussed publicly that she made multiple calls to police or how long it took for officers to respond to the home.