Boy, 6, and Girl, 13, Are Among Victims in Attack at Festival

GILROY, Calif. — The smell of barbecue was wafting through the air, a local rock band was playing its last song, and parents were collecting their children at the end of the annual garlic festival in Gilroy, California, on Sunday when a gunman opened fire, killing three people.

Stephen Romero, a 6-year-old boy from San Jose who loved Legos and Batman, had been playing near a bounce house with his mother and grandmother before he was killed. A 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s were the other victims, police said Monday.

The gunman also wounded 12 people before he was fatally shot in an exchange with three police officers, who had responded within one minute, the police chief said.

“As soon as he saw the officers he engaged the officers and fired,” said Chief Scot Smithee of the Gilroy Police Department. “Then we had the aftermath of dealing with the victims.”

Smithee identified the gunman as Santino William Legan, 19, a resident of Gilroy, about 30 miles southeast of San Jose. The chief said the gunman’s motive was not known.

“Motive is important,” Smithee said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “Everybody wants to know why, the answer why.”

The shooting “appeared as though it was random, but we’re still too early in the investigation to be able to say that definitively,” the chief said.

The suspect’s car was found northeast of Christmas Hill Park, where the festival was held, the chief said. Authorities were in the process of executing a warrant to search the car.

Legan’s home, on Gilroy’s south side, also was searched, the chief said, adding that he had no further details.

California, by some yardsticks, is among the states with the strictest gun laws in the country. Authorities did not specify the type of weapon used in the attack or whether it is banned in California. But they said the gunman carried out the shooting with a semi-automatic rifle that he had purchased legally this month in Nevada, a scenario that experts said may highlight how restrictions in some jurisdictions can be undermined by neighboring states whose gun laws are more lax.

“That’s the problem with this patchwork of laws throughout the country,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which lobbies for tighter gun laws. “Some places are trying to move the needle at the state level, but it is like combating air pollution. Your state can be the strongest on regulating emissions, but if neighboring states have no pollution controls, then air pollution is going to come downwind.”

Gilroy’s garlic festival, founded in 1979, is an internationally known event, drawing roughly 100,000 visitors each year — and one that has special significance for locals. Thousands volunteer at the festival, which raises money for local organizations, including youth swim leagues, music groups and a mission trip to build houses in Mexico.

Neighbors of the Legan family said Monday that their quiet, tree-lined community is home to a diverse mix of families and older residents. Two doors down from the family’s home, Rosana Mendoza, who has lived on the street since 2008, said the Legans were always pleasant and quick to say hello.

“It’s a quiet place,” Mendoza said. “We are shocked because they are very nice people.”

At the end of the cul-de-sac where the family lives, Larry Scettrini said he and his wife, a Spanish teacher at Gilroy High School, knew the Legans well enough to exchange pleasantries while doing yard work. The family set up a boxing gym in their garage to support another son’s amateur boxing career, Scettrini said, but he had never seen political slogans, symbols or other indications near the home to make him worry about violence.

“I’m just stunned and heartbroken,” said Scettrini, 69, a Gilroy native.

Craig Fair, a deputy special agent with the FBI in San Francisco, confirmed that Legan had recently opened a Facebook account, but he said he couldn’t confirm if he also owned an Instagram account that has been circulating online.

Smithee said at the news conference that there was “a young man that thought it would be a good idea to post on social that he just shot up the G fest.” That man, a 20-year-old, was located and taken into custody, but authorities determined he was not involved in the shooting, the chief said. The posts, he added, were a “fun way to get some attention, apparently.”

Peter Leroe-Munoz, a city councilman, said he had volunteered at a booth at the garlic festival and was horrified to learn that the shooting had taken place at the city’s prime event.

“That is our crown jewel in terms of our cultural identity,” he said. “For this kind of tragedy to take place at something so core to our community, it is a tragedy beyond words.”

The 6-year-old victim, Stephen Romero, was shot in the back, said his father, Alberto. Among the dozen people wounded were Alberto Romero’s wife, who was shot in the stomach; and his mother-in-law, who was shot in a leg.

“My son had his whole life to live,” Romero told NBC Bay Area.

Stephen Romero’s uncle, Noe Romero, 36, said that his nephew loved playing with his cousins on a tire swing outside his grandparents’ house in San Jose.

“Let’s put it this way, he’s been the only boy” out of the grandchildren on his father’s side of the family, Noe Romero said. “That’s our boy.”

To reach the festival, the suspect appeared to have crossed a nearby creek and cut a perimeter fence, the police chief said. Authorities said they were continuing to search for a possible accomplice, in response to some witness reports. “We don’t have any confirmation that any second suspect did any shooting, but we are certainly investigating all leads to determine what that person’s role was,” Smithee said. Christmas Hill Park is just off a busy thoroughfare between two new subdivisions that are under construction on the southwestern edge of Gilroy. In recent years, Gilroy, an agricultural town at the end of the Bay Area commuter rail line, has grown into an extended Silicon Valley suburb.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Twitter that the shooting was “nothing short of horrific.” Sen. Kamala Harris of California wrote that “our country has a gun violence epidemic that we cannot tolerate.”

Videos posted on social media showed attendees running past white tents in a grassy field, apparently fleeing. People looking to reunite with friends and family members had been told to gather at Gavilan College, a community college on the outskirts of the city.

Marie Blankley, mayor pro tempore of Gilroy, spent Sunday afternoon making mimosas at a booth for the local Rotary Club. She finished her shift at 5:30 p.m., picked up some ribs to go and headed home, she said. She now believes she must have just missed the shooting, which broke out around 5:40 p.m.

“I am a lifelong Gilroy resident, 55 years — this is shocking,” she said in an interview Monday, describing a city where thousands volunteer for the annual garlic festival and people of all ages come out to enjoy signature food like garlic bread, shrimp scampi and pepper steaks.

“One of the last mimosas I made, the last mimosa I made before our shift ended,” was for people who turned out to be victims, Blankley said, referring to two people who were injured. One needed stitches, she said, and the other had been shot in the arm.