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Who Was San Bernardino Victim Tin Nguyen?

by Seth Millstein

According to a report released by the coroner Thursday evening, Santa Ana resident Tin Nguyen was one of the San Bernardino victims in Wednesday's shooting at the Inland Regional Center. Nguyen, a 31-year-old Vietnamese-born woman, was a food inspector at the San Bernardino County health department, according to Newsday. She was planning to get married next year.

Like several other victims of the shooting, Nguyen was a co-worker of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters. Her cousin, Calvin Nguyen, told The Desert Sun that she wasn't supposed to be working on the day of the shooting, and because of this, her family wasn't worried about her well-being until later the evening, when they learned that she'd been at the facility. Her cousin speculated that she may have stopped by the center to drop by the annual holiday party, where the shooting took place and which Farook himself had attended earlier. When, by midnight, Nguyen's family hadn't been able to contact her, they feared that she was among the dead.

"Her mom tried to call, and all people tried to call, but no answer," Calvin said. "We said, if she survived, she would have called us back."

Nguyen was set to get married in 2017.

"She was excited about trying on her wedding dress," her uncle Phu Nguyen told Newsday.

On Thursday, the San Bernardino coroner released the names of all 14 people who were killed in Wednesday's shooting, who ranged in age from 26 to 60. An additional 21 people were injured, but not killed, in the massacre. The two shooters — Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik — were killed in a shootout with police on Wednesday. While law enforcement officials tell CNN that Farook had spoken to multiple individuals being investigated for terrorism, they add that these communications were infrequent. Neither Farook nor Malik were on any terrorist watch lists, and their motives are still unknown.