Mourners Gather in Memory of San Bernardino Shooting Victim Who Fled Iran

Bennetta Bet-Badal, 46, planned to bring presents to her co-workers and make a special presentation on the day she was shot and killed by a co-worker and his wife

Family, friends and co-workers attended a funeral service Monday in memory of San Bernardino shooting victim Bennetta Bet-Badal.

Bet-Badal, a 46-year-old mother of three, was one of 14 people shot and killed Dec. 2 when two attackers, a coworker and his wife, opened fire on San Bernardino County employees celebrating a holiday party at a state-run health center. She was scheduled to deliver a presentation to supervisors and planned to bring presents to co-workers that morning.

Her funeral service, much of it in the Assyrian language, was Monday at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Rancho Cucamonga.

Bet-Badal, born in 1969 in Iran, fled to New York at age 18 to escape Islamic extremism that followed the Iranian Revolution, her family said in a statement. She eventually moved to Rialto and married her husband, a police officer at Riverside Community College.

They had three children, ages 10, 12 and 15. Her oldest child sang the Christmas carol "Silver Bells" at Monday's service.

Bet-Badal graduated from Cal Poly-Pomona with a chemistry degree and worked as an inspector with the San Bernardino County Health Department.

The FBI is investigating the massacre as an act of terror. Shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were radicalized well before Malik came to the U.S. on a fiancee visa and had discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013, according to the agency.

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