Shooter had ‘dark thoughts’ against 2
Agents failed to share 2016 questioning of VTA worker
SAN JOSE >> The disgruntled VTA mechanic who gunned down nine coworkers in May harbored “dark thoughts about harming” two specific people, according to new details from a San Francisco International Airport encounter with customs agents when returning from the Philippines in 2016.
The two names were redacted from the report released Wednesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after a Freedom of Information Act request from the Bay Area News Group, so it’s unclear if they were among the shooting victims or connected to the Valley Transportation Authority, where seven weeks ago Sam Cassidy carried out the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history.
But the report raises new questions about why federal customs agents appear to have never informed the VTA or local law enforcement just 35 miles
away about what the agency labeled a “Significant Encounter” with Cassidy, whose personnel file indicated an escalating pattern of conflicts and confrontations with co-workers in the years before his May 26 rampage.
Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said Wednesday that he had received a copy of the redacted report last week.
“I remain deeply troubled that something could have been done to identify or stop the man who cut down and destroyed so many lives,” Rosen said. “I am meeting with federal and local officials in coming weeks to address this issue. Sharing information saves lives.”
Customs and Border Protection did not return calls Wednesday for further explanation of why agents didn’t pass the information about the encounter with Cassidy to local authorities or the VTA.
The border stop was first reported by the Wall Street Journal the day after the May 26 shooting, but the report released Wednesday reveals a number of new details.
Customs agents spent two hours questioning Cassidy and searching his luggage, Samsung Galaxy S4 phone and Canon Power Shot digital camera on Aug. 8, 2016, when he returned from a two-week solo trip to the Philippines.
The report shows that the agents appeared to spend more time examining whether Cassidy had traveled abroad for “sex tourism” — noting the “sex friendly” hotels he listed in his writings along with text messages with local women — than the memo book in his luggage that expressed his hatred of the VTA.
The Journal had reported that Cassidy was found with “books about terrorism and fear and manifestos … as well as a black memo book filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA.”
Agents asked Cassidy “if he had problems at work with anyone, and he stated no.”
The report, however, contains a number of additional details, including what the agents considered “very strange writing” with notes about Cassidy’s sexual encounters and his “dark thoughts” about “harming and vandalizing” others.
Cassidy had also written his list of goals for his trip, including “try not to have sex” and to go hiking and walking. Another goal for the trip was ominous: to “die there.”
Customs officers said Cassidy was vague and gave one-word answers. When asked whether Cassidy was taking any behavior-type medication, he said no, “but during the inspection a prescription bottle of Clonazepam” for anxiety was found. He also said he had met no one, but he had text messages from local women and a number of condoms and Viagra in his luggage.
A stack of papers pulled out from his luggage were maps around Angeles City with various bars circled and a “How to Guide” about where to find prostitutes and erotic stores. The guidebook also noted a particular hotel, where Cassidy stayed, was known for “sleazy sex encounters.”
“Cassidy was questioned as to why he had all these documents, and gave an answer, ‘just to read,’ ” the report said.
On the first page of Cassidy’s journal, the agents noted, Cassidy had written, “Show immigration fake hotel bookings,” upon entry to the Philippines.
Cassidy asked the agents whether he should seek legal counsel, but none of the revelations in his luggage, including Cassidy’s dark thoughts about harming others, led the agents to apparently do anything more than check Cassidy’s phone for pornography. Cassidy said he only had pictures of “young girls” in bikinis. Agents found “5 images of
pornographic like material, but nothing involving children.”
At 10:36 p.m. the agents returned Cassidy’s electronic devices, and “no further actions were taken.”
In an interview Wednesday, VTA’s new General Manager Carolyn Gonot, who started this week, said she was not familiar with the Customs and Border Protection report beyond what has previously been reported in news media and did not know who had been named in the document as people Cassidy wanted to harm.
Had the agents at SFO alerted the VTA or local law enforcement, California’s “red flag” law could have come into play, allowing local authorities to cite the report to obtain a gunviolence restraining order, for instance, to temporarily seize firearms while authorities assessed whether Cassidy posed a public danger. They also could have also used the information to conduct an independent evaluation of the photographs in Cassidy’s phone or camera.
John Sandweg, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Department of Homeland Security has a good reputation for sharing information with local law enforcement, but in this case, “it certainly is worth a look to make sure, in light of this, that everything is working as well as it should.”
With the benefit of hindsight, he said, the warning signs about Cassidy “might look a lot clearer today. But at the time it was not clear that (the shooting) was going to be the outcome.”
Americans can be prosecuted for traveling overseas for illicit sexual activity, Sandweg said, but “they are very challenging cases to make” because they involve tracking down witnesses abroad. Federal investigators primarily focus their efforts on child sex trafficking, and the CBP report states that agents did not find any evidence of that nature on Cassidy.
The report did not explain why Cassidy was flagged for interrogation. Sandweg said that computer systems can flag travelers for searches or questioning if they fit a profile of those who might be engaged in sex tourism. That may have been the case with Cassidy, a middle-aged man who regularly traveled alone to Southeast Asia.
Tanya Hernandez, sister of Jose Hernandez III who was killed in the shooting, is bewildered that nothing more was done.
“This wasn’t just some guy saying these things. This is written in black and white,” she said. “If somebody reached out, maybe something could have been done.”