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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.
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.
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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.
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 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.
Craig Fair, a deputy special agent with the FBI in San Francisco, confirmed 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.
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.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.