The wife of the gunman who killed 49 people in an attack at an Orlando nightclub in June was arrested in the Bay Area on Monday morning, officials said.

Noor Zahi Salman faces charges of obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said on Twitter. Authorities believe she provided “material support to a terrorist organization,” he said.

“Federal authorities have been working tirelessly on this case for more than seven months, and we are grateful that they have seen to it that some measure of justice will be served in this act of terror that has affected our community so deeply,” Mina said in the tweet.

Salman was taken into custody by federal agents at her East Bay home in Rodeo, said Prentice Danner, a spokesman for the FBI’s San Francisco Office. She grew up in the four-bedroom home on Donald Drive and lived there with her mother and sister before marrying the shooter, Omar Mateen, in 2011 and having a child.

Salman, 30, later moved with her husband to Fort Pierce, Fla. The FBI has been looking into whether she was involved in the June 12 rampage at the Pulse nightclub that left 49 people dead and dozens more injured.

Mateen died in a shootout with police during the massacre.

Salman will make an initial appearance at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in federal court in Oakland. It was not immediately clear who was given custody of her young child.

At her family’s Rodeo home on Monday morning, a woman said, “She doesn’t want to talk to nobody,” referring to Salman’s mother, before the woman closed the door. Several hours later, an unidentified woman left the house, refusing to answer questions from reporters.

Salman and Mateen were married by a Berkeley imam in a small ceremony in Hercules. In an interview with the New York Times, Salman said that six month after the wedding, she became a target of a torrent of physical abuse by her husband.

“Noor Salman had no foreknowledge nor could she predict what Omar Mateen intended to do that tragic night,” her attorney, Linda Moreno, said in a statement. “Noor has told her story of abuse at his hands. We believe it is misguided and wrong to prosecute her and that it dishonors the memories of the victims to punish an innocent person.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Monday on MSNBC that investigators are continuing to examine what led up to the massacre.

“We said from the beginning we were going to look at every aspect of this case, every aspect of this shooter's life, to determine not just why did he take these actions, but who else knew about them, was anyone else involved, is there any other accountability that needs to be had here in this case,” Lynch said.

Neighbor Glauber Franchi, 38, said he heard a bunch of cars pull up to the home of Salman’s family about 7:30 a.m., but he didn’t see the woman being arrested.

“The dogs started barking,” Franchi said. “I knew something was going on, but it didn’t seem like anything major... This is a quiet neighborhood, so you usually don’t have that many cars.”

Franchi and several other neighbors were unaware that Salman was staying at the house. They said they hadn’t seen her come or go since the shooting.

“It’s got to be tough on the mom,” Franchi said. “They’re a quiet family. Very private.” (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)

Story Date: January 17, 2017