Shooter Kills Three People, 15 People Injured. Police Killed Shooter. Alleged Second Suspect At Large.
by Heather Cassell
Festivalgoers at the Gilroy Garlic Festival are stunned, shocked, and terrified after a shooter opened fire on a crowd as a band performed its encore song.
Four people — 6-year-old male victim, an unidentified 13-year-old female victim, and an unidentified 20-something male victim — including the shooter, Santino William Legan, 19, is dead. There were 15 people injured during the shooting. Santino allegedly used an “AK-47 type assault rifle,” said Gilroy Police Chief Scot Mithee on Monday, July 29.
A suspect is in custody. Another alleged suspect is still at large.
The popping from the automatic weapon began ringing out into the air at around 5:41 p.m. on the north side of the festival area on July 28, said Scot at a press conference about four hours after the incident. Many people said they thought it was fireworks at first because it was the last day of the festival.
The reality of the situation quickly sunk in as the band stopped playing ducking under the stage along with stage mangers and some attendees as panic struck and people began running to escape the gunshots.
Two women vendors described seeing the alleged shooter describing him as an “average guy” with “short brown hair” and wearing a “green vest and hat,” one of the women said.
Then he loaded his gun and began “firing randomly swinging the gun around,” she continued.
He was so close to the women that, “he could have turned on them,” but they stayed silent and ran away from him before he could see them, she said.
The second woman said she estimated hearing between 15 to 20 shots describing the gun as a riffle.
Suddenly, the shooting stopped. The shooter was on the ground with blood all over his face and a pool of blood around his head said the first woman.
The police, who were nearby, responded in less than a minute quickly shooting the gunman dead and detaining a second suspect, said Mithee.
“So scary. So unreal. Still can’t process it,” said the second woman.
Victims were rushed to nearby hospitals.
Gunshot victims and others wounded during the shooting were rushed to St. Louise Regional Hospital. Seriously injured victims were transferred to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
Eleven victims suffering severe to fare gunshot wounds were airlifted by helicopter or taken by ambulance to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center from St. Louise Regional Hospital, said Joy Alexiou, public information officer at the County of Santa Clara Valley Health System, at a press conference Sunday night.
Eight more victims with injuries from trying to escape the shooting were also transferred from the regional hospital to the valley medical center, she added.
Some people have been treated and discharged from hospitals.
“We’ve never had a mass shooting in Santa Clara County. This is just a tough situation for our community, our staff, and everyone,” said Joy. “Hopefully we will never see another one of these again.”
The Smell Of Gunpowder
It was the final day of the popular 3-day world-renowned festival that has been a popular event attracting upward of 100,000 attendees to the small town of 55,000 residents for more than 40 years.
The TinMan classic rock band was performing its encore song for hundreds of people as thousands more milled about the food booths and sat eating on the outskirts of the stage area when a gunman started shooting randomly into the crowd, said band member Bobby Schuster.
“You could smell the gunpowder. You could hear the screams,” he said.
The festival has metal detectors and tight security with hundreds of local police officers on duty, said Scot, but no security cameras.
The shooter and other suspects got into the festival undetected by cutting through a fence in one of the festival parking areas, he said. He added that he didn’t know anything about the involvement of the second suspect or the motive for the shooting.
Amazing Community
“Gilroy is an amazing community, a tightly knit community, we are a family,” said Brian Bowe, executive director of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, noting that there are 4,000 volunteers that help put the festival on every year. “Over four decades that festival has been our annual family reunion.”
The shooting today was one of the “most tragic and sad things that I’ve ever had to see,” he continued.
“It’s just a horrible thing to experience. Our prayers go out to everyone affected by this.”
Scot agreed, adding, “It’s incredibly sad and disheartening that [the Gilroy Garlic Festival] does so much good for our community to experience a situation like this.”
He called Gilroy “an incredible community and we have incredible people here” who volunteer to host the festival that supports local community organizations and schools.
The festival has raised $11.7 million dollars to-date for local schools and organizations.
The investigation is ongoing. Police and public health officials said they would continue to update the public with future press conferences.
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