The three victims in Monday's shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego were all beloved members of the community and acted heroically to save other lives, community leaders and San Diego police said yesterday.

Security guard Amin Abdullah, as well as community members Mansour Kaziha and Nader Awad, were shot outside the center and are being praised for preventing violence from reaching children attending school inside.

Zoom in: When the shooting began, Abdullah initiated a lockdown procedure and engaged in a gun battle with the suspects, decisive actions that Police Chief Scott Wahl called "heroic" this week.

• "His actions, without a doubt, delayed, distracted and ultimately deterred these two individuals from gaining access to the greater areas of the mosque, where as many as 140 kids were within 15 feet of these suspects," Wahl said at a press conference yesterday.

The lockdown call and gun battle allowed people inside to get out of the main areas and hide, and the gunmen encountered no additional victims inside, Wahl said, citing mosque surveillance footage.

• Kaziha and Awad inadvertently drew the suspects' attention out into a parking lot, where they were cornered and killed by the suspects, Wahl said.
• At that point, hundreds of police officers were seconds away from the scene, which forced the suspects to flee in their vehicle, Wahl said.

The mosque's imam, Taha Hassane, shared memories of each victim yesterday.

• Abdullah "never, never stopped smiling to anyone," he said.
• "He was the best, absolute best dad in the world," his daughter, Hawaa Abdullah, said at a separate news conference. "He was my protector."

Kaziha, known as Abu Ezz, was a community leader who managed the mosque store for nearly 40 years.

• He was also the handyman, cook and caretaker and was at the top of Hassane's list to call when things went wrong.

Awad lived across the street from the center and came in every day for prayers. His wife is a teacher at the Islamic Center's school.

• "When he heard the shooting, he rushed to do something to protect," Hassane said. "They sacrificed their lives to protect the entire community inside the Islamic Center of San Diego."

What they're saying: The community is no stranger to threats, Hassane added.

• "We are used to receiving hate mails, hate messages, people driving by and cursing and all that stuff, but such horrible crime, we have never expected this."

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The suspected gunmen were found dead in a vehicle near the mosque from what police believe were self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

• The suspected shooters are Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, according to a local law enforcement source who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak on the case. Their identities were also confirmed yesterday by multiple other news outlets.

Police began receiving calls regarding an active shooter around 11:40am Monday.

• That was about two hours after police were contacted by the juvenile's mother, who reported that several of her weapons and car were missing.
• The first calls reporting the shooting came as officers were speaking with the juvenile's mother, Wahl said.

The suspects appear to have been "radicalized online to believe that [the victims] didn't belong because of how they looked or where they worshiped," Mark Remily, the special agent in charge of the FBI San Diego field office, said yesterday.

Law enforcement seized more than 30 pistols, rifles and shotguns, plus a crossbow, ammunition, tactical gear and electronics after searching two residences associated with the suspects.

• Wahl said the guns were not registered to the suspects and belonged to the parents of one of them.

Investigators found "writings and various ideologies outlining religious and racial beliefs of how the world they envisioned should look," in the vehicle they used, Remily said. He said they also recovered a manifesto.

• The suspects "didn't discriminate on who they hated," Remily said. "It covered a wide aspect of races and religions."

Zoom in: A symbol on a gas can outside the alleged suspects' vehicle seen in a photo taken Monday resembles the "SS bolts" associated with the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organization of Nazi Germany.

• The stylized double lightning-bolt design has become widely recognized as a neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbol.

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⛽️ Tiny screws inside gas pumps are scamming customers across the country, including locally.

• The screws stop the pump from shutting off after it's used, leaving drivers paying hundreds of dollars for fuel pumped after they drive away. (Axios)

⛪️ Churches are turning empty classrooms into affordable housing as shrinking congregations struggle to maintain aging properties. (SDBJ)

♻️ Can you recycle needles, paint or human hair? Those are some of the burning questions coming into San Diego's recycling hotline as residents try to figure out what goes where.

• The county-backed service fields thousands of such questions a month. (KPBS)

In lighter news, we are getting a second Ikea next week, but it'll be a condensed version of the massive home furnishing store, without the showroom maze.

• Literally known as the Ikea Escondido Plan and order point with pick-up, the site is basically a smaller store where customers can work with designers to update their kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms.

Yes, but: Shoppers won't be able take products home same day or score Ikea's iconic Swedish meatballs.

📍 Put 1210 Auto Park Way, Suite F, Escondido, into your favorite maps app to get there.

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General Atomics can create quite literally a small sun in Sorrento Valley.

• The defense contractor operates what's called a tokamak there that can get 100 times hotter than the sun.
• When it's on, the machine becomes the hottest thing in our entire solar system.

Toka-what? A tokamak is a doughnut-shaped machine that creates powerful magnetic fields used for nuclear fusion.

• It heats up plasma fuel super-duper hot.
• Then the doughnut shape forces it to move in circles until it fuses, which creates tons of energy.
• And unlike nuclear fission, fusion carries no risk of reactor meltdown, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The big goal is to make a pilot plant by 2030, Richard Buttery, director of the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, told Axios.

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