The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
⏩ Quick action by police saves lives at Gilroy, Calif., festival.
GILROY, Calif. — Authorities on Monday were searching for answers to why a 19yearold opened fire on a popular food festival less than a mile from his parents’ home in California, killing two children and another young man, but believe many more people would have died if officers patrolling the event had not stopped the gunman so quickly.
Santino William Legan, 19, cut through a fence and appeared to randomly target people with an “assaulttype rifle” Sunday afternoon, the end of the threeday Gilroy Garlic Festival that attracts about 100,000 people to the city known as the “Garlic Capital of the World,” Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said.
Police responded in less than a minute, and Legan turned his “AK47type” gun on them, Smithee said. Three officers fired back and killed Legan, who legally purchased the weapon this month in Nevada, where his last address is listed.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of the officers who were able to engage this guy as quickly as they did,” the police chief said. “We had thousands of people there. It could have gone so much worse so fast. … There absolutely would have been more bloodshed.”
Legan’s motive wasn’t known, Smithee said. Legan posted two photos on Instagram not long before the attack that injured 12 other people.
One photo depicted Smokey the Bear in front of a “fire danger” sign, with a caption that said to read the 19th century book “Might is Right,” a work that claims race determines behavior and is popular among white nationalists and farright extremist groups.
Legan’s sincedeleted Instagram account says he is Italian and Iranian. Minutes before the shooting, he had posted a photo from the festival saying, “Ayyy garlic festival time” and “come get wasted on overpriced (stuff ).”
The festival in the agricultural city of 50,000 about 80 miles southeast of San Francisco had security that required people to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched.
The shooter sneaked in through a fence that borders a parking lot next to a creek, Smithee said, and the gunfire sent panicked people running away and diving for cover under tables and a concert stage.
Some witnesses reported a second suspect, Smithee said, but it was unclear whether that person was armed or just helped in some way. A manhunt stretched into Monday.
The shooting killed 6yearold Stephen Romero, a 13yearold girl and recent college graduate Trevor Irby, who was in his 20s, authorities and family said.
“My son had his whole life to live, and he was only 6,” Alberto Romero told San Francisco Bay Area news station KNTV. “That’s all I can say.”
The boy’s grandmother, Maribel Romero, told Los Angeles station KABCTV that she searched several hospitals before learning he had died. She said Stephen was “always kind, happy and, you know, playful.”
Keuka College said Irby was a biology major who graduated in 2017 from the school in upstate New York.
Officials didn’t release the name of the girl who died.