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GILROY — The man who fired his assault rifle into a crowd at the Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday likely “pre-planned” the attack that killed three and wounded 12, authorities said, a theory backed by the seizure of body armor and other tactical gear from his Nevada home.
Federal and local law enforcement also now believe 19-year-old Santino William Legan carried out the mass shooting by himself, based on the part of the investigation that entailed the review of footage from security cameras located throughout the city chronicling his movements prior to the melee.
“He was by himself. He was not with anybody else. That is sort of supporting the thought now that he acted on his own,” police Chief Scot Smithee said Tuesday. “Our investigation is leading us more and more to believe that there was not a second subject involved.”
A search warrant served Monday on Legan’s car found northwest of Christmas Hill Park turned up an unused shotgun that police say was purchased by the suspect, and a search of a creek near the festival site led to the recovery of a bag full of ammunition they say also belonged to him.
Another search warrant served around the same time at an apartment unit 300 miles away in Walker Lake, Nevada, south of Reno — Legan’s most recent listed address — turned up items that included a bulletproof vest, gas mask, empty ammo boxes, gun pamphlets, an empty diazepam bottle, assorted electronic devices and what the Mineral County District Attorney’s Office described as a “letter from Virginia to Santino.”
The discovery appears to have helped formed the basis of Smithee’s assertion that Sunday’s shooting was a premeditated attack.
“It certainly seems to me that it was preplanned. But how long and how widespread and whether there was any additional component of the plan, I just don’t know at this point,” he said.
In a statement accompanying the release of the search warrant receipt, Mineral County Sheriff Randy Adams said Legan did not attract any attention from his agency.
“He (Legan) appears to have moved into Mineral County this Spring and maintained a low-profile,” Adams said.
Investigators say they still don’t know exactly why the Gilroy High School grad navigated his way through a nearby creek, cut through a security fence and opened fire on a crowd listening to an encore by a band as the three-day festival was winding down. Craig Fair, deputy special agent in charge for the FBI San Francisco office, said Tuesday that the search for a motive continues.
“We continue to try to understand who the shooter is, what motivated him and if he was aligned with any particular ideology,” Fair said. “We’re still reviewing social media. We’re doing forensic evaluation of digital media.”
Authorities previously have said that they were looking into social media posts Legan put up just before the shooting, including one Instagram image with an apparent reference to the white supremacist manifesto “Might is Right or The Survival of the Fittest,” an 1890 work often mentioned on extremist websites. In the post, which has since been taken down, Legan also used racial and misogynistic slurs to describe “hordes” of Silicon Valley workers and people of mixed race origin “overcrowding” towns.
Another Instagram post referenced the Gilroy festival: “Ayyy garlic festival,” Legan wrote in the caption. “Come get wasted on overpriced (expletive).”
However, Fair was careful to say that no evidence has been uncovered to suggest that Legan deliberately targeted the people he shot.
“We’ve got to get into the computers,” Fair said, “the thumb drives, the phone to get a holistic picture of him and who he was in touch with, what sentiments and thoughts he shared with others or he catalogued for his own consumption.”
Meanwhile, the three Gilroy police officers who, within a minute of the first rounds fired, rushed over to engage Legan, fatally shooting him soon after, remain on paid administrative leave while police and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office conduct what Smithee described as a routine investigation of the officer-involved fatality.
“I think it’s a very emotional thing for them. It’s one thing to be involved in the shooting, but then they were also in the middle of the carnage of the people that were shot and immediately went into rendering aid,” the police chief said. “And those two things combined for anybody is a very difficult thing to go through.”
As the investigation continues, the city of Gilroy has witnessed an outpouring of grief, with hundreds gathering for vigils to commemorate the three lives that were lost — and the hundreds of others dramatically altered — during the shooting. The victims killed in the shooting have been identified as 6-year-old Stephen Romero, of San Jose, 13-year-old Keyla Salazar, of San Jose, and 25-year-old Trevor Irby, of Romulus, New York. At least 12 other people were wounded or injured, and several remain hospitalized.
“We cannot let the bastard that did this tear us down,” a defiant Mayor Roland Velasco said to cheers from a crowd outside City Hall on Monday night.
Eileen Stillwell, a fifth-generation resident of Gilroy, came to the vigil to both offer and seek solace.
“I’m hoping that it never happens again,” the 60-year-old said. “It just hurts. And it felt like if I came tonight I would get some healing. I wanted to do something, even if it’s just hugging a new person.”
Justin Bates, 24, of Hollister, was among the dozen-plus festivalgoers who were hit by gunfire and survived. Freshly released from the hospital and leaning on a single crutch, he said he attended the vigil to give his condolences to families who lost loved ones.
“Everyone is coming together and showing so much love for everyone,” he said. “It’s really beautiful how the community is handling the most terrible situation that could have happened.”
Bates already is making plans to attend next year’s festival.
“You’ve gotta be strong and gotta pray,” he said. “Depending on how the security is next year, I’m not going to let this guy (Legan) get the better of me. I hope Gilroy doesn’t let this guy get the better of them.”
Staff writers Patrick May and Joseph Geha contributed to this report.
HELP FOR VICTIMS
A family assistance center will be hosted at Rucker Elementary School, 325 Santa Clara Ave. in Gilroy, through at least Friday for those affected by the Gilroy Garlic Festival shootings. The American Red Cross, the District Attorney’s Office Victim Services Unit, and county behavioral health services will offer grief counseling, help filing claims for state funds to help pay medical and counseling bills and for other assistance, and referrals to medical, counseling and other assistance providers. The center will be open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and could be extended after that as needed. For more information, call 408-209-8356.