Chief Scot Smithee of the Gilroy Police Department identified the perpetrator of Sunday’s attack as Santino William Legan, 19. The gunman, who also wounded 12 people, carried out the shooting with a semi-automatic rifle that he had purchased legally this month in Nevada, the police chief said.
Three officers confronted the gunman only a minute after the shooting began at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the chief said. “Even though they were outgunned, with handguns against a rifle, those three officers were able to fatally wound that suspect,” Smithee said. “It could have gone so much worse so fast.”
He said the gunman’s motive was not known but indicated that he was a resident of Gilroy, which is about 30 miles southeast of San Jose.
“I think he was living with family members,” he said. “I don’t know how long he was in Nevada or how long he’d been back.”
The Garlic Festival, founded in 1979, is an internationally known event, drawing roughly 100,000 visitors each year — and one that has special significance for locals. Thousands of community members volunteer at the festival, which raises money for nonprofits.
Peter Leroe-Munoz, a city councilman, said he had volunteered at a booth at the garlic festival and was horrified to learn that the shooting had taken place at the city’s prime event.
“That is our crown jewel in terms of our cultural identity,” he said. “For this kind of tragedy to take place at something so core to our community, it is a tragedy beyond words.”
The 6-year-old victim, Stephen Romero, was shot in the back, said his father, Alberto. Among the dozen people wounded were Alberto Romero’s wife, who was shot in the stomach, and his mother-in-law, who was shot in the leg.
“My son had his whole life to live,” Romero told NBC Bay Area.
Stephen Romero’s uncle, Noe Romero, 36, said that his nephew loved Batman and playing with his cousins on a tire swing outside his grandparents’ house in San Jose.
“Let’s put it this way, he’s been the only boy” out of the grandchildren on his father’s side of the family, Noe Romero said. “That’s our boy.”
California has, by some yardsticks, the strictest gun laws in the country. With few exceptions, it is illegal in the state to own, possess, lend or import guns like the one described on Monday by Smithee. Nevada does not have any similar ban, however.
The description provided by the chief suggested that it was a semi-automatic weapon, allowing the gunman to fire one shot with each pull of the trigger. California bans firearms that fit the state’s definition of an “assault weapon.” That includes many of the most popular semi-automatic rifles and others that have ammunition magazines that can be easily swapped out and which also include features like a pistol grip or folding stock.
To reach the festival, the suspect appeared to have crossed a bordering creek and cut a perimeter fence, the police chief said. Authorities said they were continuing to search for a possible accomplice, in response to some witness reports. “We don’t have any confirmation that any second suspect did any shooting, but we are certainly investigating all leads to determine what that person’s role was,” Smithee said.
The shooting happened around 5:40 p.m. local time Sunday. On Monday morning, red and white festival parking signs still lined residential streets around Christmas Hill Park. Several rows of pickup trucks, sedans and golf carts remained parked along the grass behind yellow crime-scene tape.
Officers from several local and state law enforcement agencies tightly controlled access to the park, and a handwritten sign posted at nearby Gavilan College said that campus would also be closed for the day.
Christmas Hill Park is just off a busy thoroughfare between two new subdivisions under construction on the southwestern edge of Gilroy. In recent years, the agricultural town located at the end of the Bay Area commuter rail line has grown into an extended Silicon Valley suburb.
Marie Blankley, the mayor pro tempore, called it “heartbreaking and tragic,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Twitter that it was “nothing short of horrific.” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., added that “our country has a gun violence epidemic that we cannot tolerate.”
Videos posted on social media showed attendees running past white tents in a grassy field, apparently fleeing. People looking to reunite with friends and family members had been told to gather at Gavilan College, a community college on the outskirts of the city.
One of those injured was Lesley Sanchez, 15, a Gilroy High School cheerleader who was volunteering at the festival, according to family members. She was shot in the hip but was well enough to receive visitors in her hospital room Sunday night, they said.
Olivia Chiu, 24, a festival attendee from San Francisco, said she and her boyfriend heard gunshots that seemed to come from a central area near food and merchandise vendors.
“Everyone was in a state of panic and trying to escape out of the festival to a safer area,” she said.
She said she and several others ran out of the park and into a neighborhood, where they knocked on doors in search of shelter.
Jonathan Williams, 29, who was raised in Gilroy, was sitting on a hay bale when he heard what he thought were fireworks. When the sound did not stop, he realized they were gunshots — at least 20.
He saw lots of people, including children with their parents, running frantically and hiding under anything they could find.
“There were people jumping in closed booth tents, hiding under tables,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.