When Ammar Campa-Najjar saw the news about a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego today, it hit close to home, he said.
Campa-Najjar attended the school at the mosque growing up, he told CNN’s Jake Tapper, learning in the classrooms like the kids today were. He said he is “deeply devastated and heartbroken” to learn that three adults were killed, according to police.
“When I heard that there was where they had gone, where the gunman had gone, I remember where those places are, what those classrooms rooms were,” he said. The director of the Islamic Center said earlier that all kids, teachers and staff are safe.
Campa-Najjar, who is running as a Democrat in a nearby California congressional district, said acts of violence like this should spur people to stand up to hate. Police said earlier investigators were considering the shooting a hate crime, for now.
“I think we have to come together and just not let the voices of division — beginning from the very top of our government on down, we have to be better than those voices,” he said.
