Investigators pore over evidence in Gilroy shootings

As a community mourns the loss of three lives in the shooting Sunday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, investigators continue their search for the gunman's motive

A half-week after Sunday’s horrific mass shooting at the fabled Gilroy Garlic Festival, survivors of the attack continued to improve on Wednesday as families and friends remember their loved ones who died in the attack.

Now four days into their investigation of the shooting that left three dead and at least a dozen injured, a joint task force of law-enforcement agencies pored over evidence collected so far from the sprawling crime scene at the festival site. They’re also examining items recovered from the small unfurnished apartment in an isolated Nevada hamlet where the killer, 19-year-old Santino William Legan, holed up for weeks before the killings, living a  life as what one official described as “kind of a loner.”

Items retrieved from those scenes, as well as from Legan’s car, include an unused shotgun that police say was purchased by the suspect as well as 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 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.

Whatever may have driven Legan on Sunday to cut through a security fence and use an AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle to open fire on innocent festival-goers watching a concert on closing night. He was killed  police officers who arrived on scene within on minute, taking down the heavily armed shooter with just their service revolvers.

Legan attended high school in Gilroy in his senior year and was recently living in Nevada, according to a report in this newspaper. He bought two guns – the AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle he used in the attack and a shotgun that was discovered in his car near the festival, authorities said, adding that a bag of ammunition was also found in a creek near the fence, police said.

Legan was living in an apartment in Walker Lake, a remote northern Nevada community, and had not had any run-ins with the law, officials sa rifle boxes, a gas mask, empty ammunition boxes, electronic devices, pamphlets on guns and a sack full of ammunition casings, prosecutors said.

Another important part of their investigation continues this morning as agents comb through Legan’s social-media accounts, including his emails and phone calls, to determine who was he was in contact with in the weeks and days before his deadly outburst. While police initially said they were looking for a possible accomplice, the likelihood of Legan having someone else with him in the attack has diminished as police now believe Legan acted alone.

“We understand him to be kind of a loner,” said Craig Fair, deputy special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco Division. “People who act alone are exceptionally dangerous because they … may not communicate their plans, intentions, mindset – they may not impart that on other people.””

Authorities don’t believe Legan was targeting anyone specifically based on characteristics like race, but they’re still trying to determine his ideology, Fair told reporters. On the day of the attack, Legan urged his Instagram followers to read a 19th century book popular with white supremacists on extremist websites.

He also complained about overcrowding towns and paving open space to make room for “hordes” of Latinos and Silicon Valley whites.