RIVERSIDE, Ca. — A Grand Jury officially indicted the friend who provided the gun used in the deadly San Bernardino shooting.
According to the Associated Press, 24-year-old Enrique Marquez was charged with lying on official documents when he bought the assault rifles and helping to plan terror attacks never carried out.
If convicted on the charges, Marquez could spend up to 50 years behind bars.
The suspect and Syed Farook, who was killed during a shootout with police after the attack on December 2, reportedly planned to carry out several attacks in 2011 and 2012.
During one attack the duo planned to use pipe bomb and guns to kill people at the college they attended.
In another they wanted to gun down motorists who were stuck in rush hour traffic.
Those plans were never carried out.
“Mr. Marquez is charged for his role in a conspiracy several years ago to target innocent civilians in our own backyard with cold-blooded terror attacks, and with providing weapons to an individual whose endgame was murder,” David Bowdich, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said in a statement.
Prosecutors also said Marquez committed immigration fraud when he pretended to be married to a Russian woman who was really the sister-in-law of Farook’s older brother.
Marquez had already been charged in a criminal complaint filed December 17 before the charges were taken to the grand jury.
He has not entered a plea, but he is expected to do so in an arraignment January 6.
He was being held without bail.
Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a conference room full of his co-workers at a social services center December 2, killing 14 and injuring 22 others.
The couple was killed in a gunbattle with authorities hours later.
After the shooting, Marquez reportedly called law enforcement and spent more than 10 days talking to authorities about Farook.
His attorney argued Marquez should get credit for coming forward after the shootings, and pointed out that his was not charged with plotting the San Bernardino attacks, only with aborted attacks.
