YouTube shooting autopsy: Nasim Aghdam’s bullet went through the heart

SAN BRUNO — Nasim Aghdam put on fresh lipstick and tied a black and gold scarf around her neck before exacting her revenge on YouTube.

After shooting and wounding three employees having lunch at the company headquarters, the 38-year-old turned the 9 mm Smith and Wesson to her chest, then shot herself — at a 15-degree downward angle — through the heart, according to a coroner’s report released Monday to this news organization.

The pathology report from the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office showed no evidence of alcohol or drugs in her system or other medical conditions that might have contributed to her mental state.

Theories on why Aghdam stormed into YouTube on April 3 have been widely reported: She was upset that the social media giant was censoring her quirky and at times revolting animal cruelty videos, diminishing her audience and her income from advertisers.

The coroner’s report notes tiny details that provide insights into the puzzling life of the woman who still remains largely a mystery.

She wore two pairs of socks under tri-color sneakers.

Her black sunglasses remained affixed to the top of her head.

She had never been married.

Her black hair was starting to gray.

She wore mascara on her eyes and brows.

She was 5-foot-5-and-a-half and 114 pounds.

Aghdam wore black pants and a white sweater with pastel-colored patterns. A bullet hole pierced it and blood had soaked through. “There is an extensive area of destruction of the heart,” the report notes.

The bullet hit her left lung before it passed through the left rib and out of the body.

“Other than the gunshot wound,” the report says, “the heart appears to be non-remarkable.”

The Aghdam family immigrated from Iran to the United States in 1996, when Nasim was 16. She loved animals and became a vegan, extolling the virtues of a meat-free diet on her videos. They were free-wheeling and bizarre and went viral in her home country, where a number of watchers made fun of her antics. But she had few real friends, those who knew her have said, and she seemed to live a solitary life.

“She was very kind,” her father, Ismail Aghdam, said in a recent interview before the release of the coroner’s report. “I don’t know how she (could have) killed herself.”

During the interview at the family home in California’s Imperial Valley, Aghdam walked through his daughter’s spare and neat bedroom, offering a reporter a brief tour. One wall was painted blue, the backdrop to her many videos, he said. Along another wall were her desk, sewing machine and mannequin, where she made and displayed her often skin-tight costumes and sparkly gowns she wore in front of the camera. She slept in a twin bed with pink and green coverlet.

The family has turned the dining room into a shrine to her, with orchids, ferns and flowers surrounding photographs of her.

Aghdam insisted his daughter was not mentally ill.

“She was very smart,” he said.

And she was healthy. “She never used medicine and was never sick,” he said.

The family filed a missing person report a few days before the shooting and still blames police for failing to stop her. When officers found her sleeping in her car in a Mountain View parking lot the night before the shooting, they asked her, “You don’t want to hurt yourself, do you?” the police officer asked, according to a video of the exchanged released by the Mountain View Police Department.

“No,” she said.

“And you don’t want to hurt anyone else? You don’t want to want to commit suicide or anything like that, right?” the police officer asked.

“No,” Aghdam said, shaking her head dismissively as she fiddled with her cell phone.

Both were lies. When Mountain View police called the Aghdams at their home in the Southern California town of Menifee to say they had talked to her and she seemed fine, the family warned that Nasim was angry at YouTube. The dispute with police played out in the days after the shootings, with Mountain View police explaining their officers did everything they should have to assess her well-being and keep her family informed.

But months later, Ismail Aghdam is still not convinced.

“Police didn’t do nothing,” her father said last month. “I told them she had a problem with YouTube. They should have followed her.”

Staff Writer Matthias Gafni contributed to this report.