Gunman kills 3 at California festival
Details emerge about Calif. shooting
GIL ROY, Cal if .— Authorities on Monday were searching for answers to why a 19-year-old opened fire on a popular food festival less than a mile from his parents' home in California, killing two children and another 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 “assault-type rifle” Sunday afternoon, the end of the three-day 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 “AK-47-type” gun on the officers, Smithee said. Three officers fired back and killed Legan, who legally purchased the weapon in Nevada this month.
“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.
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.