Gunman texted before killing 3

GILROY >> Before a 19-year-old gunman opened fire on a famed garlic festival in his California hometown, he urged his Instagram followers to read a 19th century book popular with white supremacists on extremist websites, but his motives for killing two children and another young man were still a mystery Monday.

Santino William Legan posted the caption about the book “Might is Right” with a photo of Smokey the Bear in front of a “fire danger” sign. He posted another photo from the Gilroy Garlic Festival minutes before he shot into the crowd Sunday with an “AK-47type” weapon, killing a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a recent college graduate.

Under it, he wrote: “Ayyy garlic festival time” and “Come get wasted on overpriced” items. Legan’s since-deleted Instagram account says he is Italian and Iranian.

The postings are among the first details that have emerged about Legan since the shooting injured 12 others and sent people running and diving under tables. Police patrolling the event responded within a minute and killed Legan as he turned the weapon on them.

He legally purchased the gun this month in Nevada, where his last address is listed. He would have been barred from buying it in California, which restricts firearms purchases to people over 21. In Nevada, the limit is 18.

Legan grew up less than a mile from the park where the city known as the “Garlic Capital of the World” has held its threeday festival for four decades, attracting more than 100,000 people with music, food booths and cooking classes.

Authorities were searching for clues as to what caused the son of a prominent local family to go on such a rampage. His father was a competitive runner and coach, a brother was an accomplished young boxer and his grandfather had been a supervisor in Santa Clara County. Police searched the two-story Legan family home and a dusty car parked out front, leaving with paper bags. Authorities also searched an apartment they believed Legan used this month in remote northern Nevada. Officials didn’t say what they found or were looking for in either place. A law enforcement official said investigators believe the gunman used a WASR-10, a variant of an AK-47, that he bought from Big Mikes Gun and Ammo in Nevada earlier this month. The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Big Mike’s Guns and Ammo, which appears to be a homebased internet gun shop in Fallon, posted on its Facebook page that “we are heartbroken this could ever happen” and that Legan “was acting happy and showed no reasons for concern” when the store owner met him.

Police had just completed training in how to respond to an active shooter. While they had prepared for the worst, they never expected to put their skills to use in Gilroy, a city of about 50,000 about 80 miles southeast of San Francisco known for the pungent smell of the prize flowering crop grown in the surrounding fields — garlic.

The city had put in place security for the festival, one of the largest food fairs in the country. It required people to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched. Police, paramedics and firefighters were stationed throughout the event.

But Legan didn’t go through the front entrance. He cut through a fence that borders a parking lot next to a creek, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said.

NOAH BERGER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FBI personnel pass a ticket booth at the Gilroy Garlic Festival Monday in Calif., the morning after a gunman killed at least three people, including a 6-year-old boy, and wounding about 15 others. An official identified the gunman, who was shot and killed by police, as Santino William Legan.