Investigators search for motive in California mass shooting

Farook, a 28-year-old county restaurant inspector, and his wife or fiancee, Tashfeen Malik, 27, slaughtered 14 people and seriously wounded more than a dozen others in a precision attack Wednesday at a social service center for the disabled before they were gunned down in an SUV a few miles away in a furious shootout with police.

Investigators Thursday were trying to learn why the couple left behind their baby daughter and went on the rampage — the nation's deadliest mass shooting since the Newtown, Connecticut, school tragedy three years ago that left 26 children and adults dead.

The home is where officers initially saw a vehicle matching the description of the attackers' SUV in the hours before the final gunbattle.

The attackers invaded the center about 60 miles east of Los Angeles around 11 a.m., opening fire in a conference area where county health officials were having an employee banquet.

The couple dropped off their 6-month-old daughter with relatives Wednesday morning, saying they had a doctor's appointment, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said after talking with family.

About four hours after the morning carnage, police hunting for the killers riddled a black SUV with gunfire in a shootout 2 miles from the social services center in this Southern California city of 214,000 people.