Neighbors of San Bernardino shooter's brother rattled after arrests

The arrests of the San Beardino terrorist attackers’ relatives Thursday has once again shaken up a Corona neighborhood.

Five months after Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani emigrant wife, Tashfeen Malik, launched their Dec. 2 attack, his brother, Navy veteran Syed Raheel Farook, the brother’s wife and her sister were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy, marriage fraud and making false statements, the U.S. Attoey’s Office aounced.

Federal agents had descended on the home with warrants in February and removed items, but no arrests were made until early Thursday moing.

Raheel Farook and his wife, Tatiana, live there with a 1-year-old baby, his father, Syed Farook, and his mother, Rafia Farook. No one answered the door at the home.

All was quiet after 8 a.m., but neighbors remained rattled.

Dane Adams, who lives two doors down on Forum Way, said he and his wife, Brittani, were shocked to lea Raheel Farook had been arrested without them hearing or seeing anything.

“I thought this was over,” said Adams, 24.

Erin Long, who lives across from the Farooks, said as she walked her dog, Dusty, past the Farooks’ house that she and her husband saw law enforcement agents question the Farooks on Thursday moing.

“I have a front-row seat,” said Long, 32. “It’s just a weird situation happening in your neighborhood.”

The Gallery townhouse community’s residents have seemed more tense since the Dec. 2 attack, neighbor Garrett Spencer said.

On Thursday, he walked past the Farook house to watch the joualists after leaing about the arrests on TV and hearing a helicopter circling overhead.

“I was like, again?” said Spencer, 46.

Immediately after the attack, his wife took their kids to stay at her parents’ house for two nights after law enforcement visited the neighborhood.

Spencer said he has never spoken with the Farooks, adding that they seem nice and keep to themselves. He said he’s been conceed about any possible involvement in the attack by the family because he has two young children.

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “It wasn’t small potatoes.”

Adams said he’d be surprised if Raheel Farook tued out to be involved in the attack.

“To me, they seem so normal, so average, to be having this kind of trouble with the FBI,” he said.

Curious neighbors walked past the house and TV news trucks through the moing.

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Alex Gomez, a 20-year-old Fullerton College student, wondered whether the wives of Farook and Enrique Marquez Jr. were arrested after something was found on Syed Rizwan Farook’s locked iPhone.

“You never think it’s going to be your neighborhood,” he said. “It’s a little shocking.”

Neighbor Stacy Mozer, 55, went to the Farooks’ house after 9 a.m. to see if he could help. He called them “great” and “friendly” people.

Raheel Farook has told Mozer he knew nothing about his brother’s plans and wasn’t involved.

“He’s an ex-Marine,” Mozer said. “He served his country.”

In Ontario, the small condominium complex where Marquez’s wife, Mariya Cheykh, reportedly lived was also quiet Thursday moing.

Marquez faces trial on charges of conspiring with Syed Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012 to provide material support to terrorists, including two of the guns used in the Dec. 2 assault that killed 14 and wounded 22.

Neighbors in the Riverside neighborhood where Marquez lived with his parents said they weren’t surprised his wife has also been arrested.

“I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Robert Roberson, 68.

Staff writers Stephen Wall, Ali Tadayon and Doug Saunders contributed to this report.