19th (Another mass shooting)

[Peter]

www.

  maybe politicians should start to talk about the underlying problems rather than concentrate I exclusively upon a tool. www.ssristories.net/school-shootings/   They may want to look more closely into the mental health industry rather than say it has nothing to do with the shootings. Just a thought.

[Athos_131]

‘It can happen anywhere’: After a deadly shooting, trauma and tragedy. But not surprise.

Gabe Cartagena, 21, has twice seen guns send his school into lockdown.

It first happened over a decade ago, at Mountain View Elementary in Hickory, when his teacher told the class of 7-year-olds to hide against a wall, following a threat from a cafeteria worker.

The second time was this past week, as a student entered a UNC Charlotte classroom and began shooting, killing two students, putting another four in the hospital, and turning the last day of classes into a day of utter chaos.

“You kind of always expect that one day, it will happen to you,” said Cartagena, a junior. “I was raised with it, I guess.”

In the wake of that deadly — and so far, unexplained — attack, the reaction on campus was one of grief, and fear, and trauma. But it was not one of shock: An incident like Tuesday’s shooting, he and other students said, was going to happen eventually. It was only a matter of time.

Like much of the UNCC student body, he is part of what some have called “Generation Lockdown”: They grew up with news of Sandy Hook and Parkland, and they remember crawling under tables for drills in elementary school. When it wasn’t a drill this time, they knew more about response protocols than many adults on campus.

But that’s also perhaps because it wasn’t the first time many of those young people, like Cartagena, were facing this kind of incident.

Since 1999, more than 226,000 students have experienced gun violence at school, a Washington Post analysis found. In North Carolina alone, there have been at least 13 incidents in that time period, according to The Post.


Researchers have found conflicting data on whether the incidence of those shootings is in fact on the rise in the United States, though the number of people killed has increased. (Under some definitions, the attack at UNC Charlotte would not be counted because fewer than four people died.)

But culturally speaking, the fear and awareness of those incidents is undoubtedly on the rise.

“People think going and shooting places up is what you do when you don’t have anything else you can do,” said UNCC senior Sena Sarikaya, but “that’s something that goes through people’s minds in this culture right now.”

FOR SOME FAMILIES, THE SECOND SCHOOL SHOOTING IN MONTHS

Sarikaya, 21, had already seen the alert that flashed on her phone screen Tuesday evening, telling her to “RUN, HIDE, FIGHT.”

It was the same one she had heard in high school, as she went through lockdown after lockdown preparing for what might happen. And it was the same command her 17-year-old sister Amela repeated at home last fall, when it did happen: one student fatally shot another right across the hall from her classroom at Butler High School.

Now, Sarikaya said, her parents are telling her not to return to campus, for fear that more violence will occur. And the family is simply awaiting the day when their youngest sister, now in middle school, will face a shooting.

“If it isn’t her middle school, it’s going to be her high school,” she said. “If it’s not her high school, it’s going to be her college.”

Closer to campus, Rania Hamdan, 21, found out about the attack as she was driving back to pick up her graduation cord. In the midst of the chaos, she spoke over the phone with a friend from Switzerland.


“How are you being so calm about this?” he asked her.


Hamdan’s answer was simple: This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, she said. A few months ago, she frantically woke up to a call from her mother. There was a shooting going on at her high school.

“To be doing that for the second time in several months,” she said, “that’s when I really started to get upset.”

On any other Tuesday, Hamdan would have been leading a Model UN meeting a few yards away from the site of the shooting in Kennedy Hall. She would have been with many of her closest friends.

“When we do see it in the news, we’re so desensitized to it, because it’s happening so much,” she said. “But when we see it happening in our community again, it’s not just a headline.”

And yet, Hamdan said, the shock doesn’t last that long.

On Monday, the day before the shooting, Butler High commemorated the six-month anniversary of the attack on its grounds and the death of sophomore Bobby McKeithen III. Administrators put a plaque up in memory of McKeithen and asked all faculty and students to sign a “Butler Strong” pledge.

Two days later, with the hashtag #UNCCStrong trending on Twitter, the high school students all wore green. At UNCC, the crowds of college students who poured onto campus to a student-organized vigil, lighting candles in memory of the two students who had been killed.

UNCC student body president Chandler Crean described Tuesday as “the saddest day in UNC Charlotte history.”


“We have to stand strong together, love one another and stand up for each other,” Crean told the crowd.

Hamdan, the senior, heard her classmates — those who were not too afraid to return to campus — say that “this isn’t Charlotte.” But she pushed back against that idea.


“How is Charlotte any different than Baltimore? How is UNC Charlotte any different than Virginia Tech? How is Butler any different than Parkland?” Hamdan asked. “We’re all living under the same circumstances. It can happen anywhere.”


THEIR CLASS PROJECT: A MEMORIAL FOR MASS SHOOTINGS
Nick Jensen, 19, was with Cartagena, driving to Plaza Midwood when he heard about the attack at Kennedy Hall. He said he was equally unsurprised: A threat had shut down his high school, Southeast Guilford near Greensboro, about four years ago.

“As much as I didn’t want it to happen, it was a thing that I expected would happen,” Jensen said. “It’s something that’s expected at pretty much every university and high school and is eventually happening at every university and high school.”

He had also spent much of this semester thinking about mass shootings, tasked with designing a memorial in his architecture class with Professor Rachel Dickey. Without a specific location, the project instructed them to respond to and memorialize shootings in some way.

“It is such a ubiquitous concept that my professor felt it was important to acknowledge it in our studies,” Jensen said.

Jensen went to the Wikipedia list of mass shootings in the U.S. and wrote them all down one by one in order to try and grasp the extent of the problem, jotting down the location and death toll for each one.

He designed a field of posts, where the height of each post corresponded to the number of people killed in each shooting, as a way to visualize the epidemic.

“If you’re presented with having to stand at look at something, it kind of brings the issue into scale,” he said. “It’s become so common that we don’t realize just how big a problem it is.”

A CALL TO ACTION, AND A CALL TO ARMS
Like many others, 21-year-old Dalton Kirby, said Tuesday wasn’t his first brush with the issue of guns on campus.

Growing up in Chattanooga, Tenn., Kirby said he had done plenty of active shooter drills in high school. Once, the threat became real when a shooter in the neighborhood tried to seek shelter at his high school.

He was nearby, but off-campus, when Tuesday’s shooting put UNCC on lockdown. And he said that having gone through another incident makes him want to own a gun.

“If somebody walks through my house with a gun, they’re getting shot. Plain and simple,” Kirby said.

But he’s likely an outlier on campus, and nationally, as similar incidents across the country have sparked a wave of youth activism calling for gun control, he’s an outlier.

The UNCC chapter of March for Our Lives NC had been formed barely a few months ago. In the wake of this past week’s tragedy, they rallied around the clock to put together a “rally for remembrance” on campus Friday. And this time, it was political.

“The type of culture that we live in normalizes this violence,” said junior Cade Lee, 19, the chapter leader. “We recognize that a large majority of our politicians aren’t doing anything to stop this problem.”
On Friday afternoon students and elected officials told a crowd of about a hundred students — many of them still wearing green — to express their anger and emotions following the shooting when they go vote.

U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, a former college professor, said that she never felt afraid while teaching on campus. But she’s fearful for her grandson, who will head off to college in the fall.

“It’s all about power, and you have it,” the Charlotte Democrat told the crowd. “But you have to use it.”

Students’ signs echoed the same messages: “Ballots not bullets.” “Guns don’t vote, but I do.” “You can put a silencer on a gun, but not on the voice of the people.”

Kristine Slade, a senior who planned the vigil earlier in the week, told the the crowd that the deaths of Riley Howell and Ellis “Reed” Parlier in Tuesday’s shooting should motivate them to keep fighting for change — for solutions, and for stricter gun laws.

“This has got to end,” Slade said.

An hour away in Greensboro, she said, there had been reports of an active shooter threat at North Carolina A&T.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

At least seven injured in school shooting in suburban Denver, 2 suspects in custody

At least seven, possibly eight victims were injured Tuesday in a shooting at a school in suburban Denver, authorities said.

Douglas County Undersheriff Holly Nicholson-Kluth said two suspects are in custody in the shooting at the STEM School Highlands Ranch, which covers K-12.

Nicholson-Kluth said she believed the victims were injured by gunfire.

The shooting started in the middle school just before 2 p.m., Nicholson-Kluth said. A school official called authorities to report that shots were fired, she said.

"Over the next few minutes, quite a few shots were fired," she said.

Police and sheriff's deputies were on scene almost immediately, she said.

"As officers were arriving at the school they could still hear gunshots," Nicholson-Kluth said.

Nicholson-Kluth said authorities don't know at this point if the suspected shooters are students.

Though authorities initially said they were looking for a possible third suspect, Nicholson-Kluth said they are no longer looking for another suspect.


At least seven injured in school shooting in suburban Denver, 2 suspects in custody
By Sheena Jones, Steve Almasy and Darran Simon, CNN

Updated 6:28 PM ET, Tue May 7, 2019
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(CNN)At least seven, possibly eight victims were injured Tuesday in a shooting at a school in suburban Denver, authorities said.

Douglas County Undersheriff Holly Nicholson-Kluth said two suspects are in custody in the shooting at the STEM School Highlands Ranch, which covers K-12.
Nicholson-Kluth said she believed the victims were injured by gunfire.
The shooting started in the middle school just before 2 p.m., Nicholson-Kluth said. A school official called authorities to report that shots were fired, she said.
"Over the next few minutes, quite a few shots were fired," she said.
Officers heard gunshots as they arrived, undersheriff says
Police and sheriff's deputies were on scene almost immediately, she said.
"As officers were arriving at the school they could still hear gunshots," Nicholson-Kluth said.
A community grieves after a mass shooting at the STEM School Highlands Ranch.
A community grieves after a mass shooting at the STEM School Highlands Ranch.
Nicholson-Kluth said authorities don't know at this point if the suspected shooters are students.
Though authorities initially said they were looking for a possible third suspect, Nicholson-Kluth said they are no longer looking for another suspect.
Injuries in school shooting

At least three local hospitals were treating eight patients after the shooting.

Five patients were being treated at Littleton Adventist Hospital in Littleton, hospital spokeswoman Wendy Forbes told CNN in an email.

One victim was in good condition at Children's Hospital Colorado South Campus in Highlands Ranch, according to Jaime Berg, a spokeswoman.

Two juvenile patients were being treated at the Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree.

The STEM School was placed on lockdown after the shooting, the Douglas County School District said in a tweet. All other Highlands Ranch schools were on a lockout, the tweet said.

The lockout was later lifted from Highlands Ranch schools, the district said.

"This is a good community. It's usually very quiet, extremely low crime rate," said the undersheriff, who has been with the department 30 years.

The STEM School has about 1,800 students, the undersheriff said. It is located about seven miles from Columbine High School, which is in Littleton, Colorado.

On April 20, 1999, two students killed 12 of their classmates and one teacher in a mass shooting at Columbine High.

Douglas County Schools were closed April 17 as authorities scrambled to find an armed Florida teen they said was infatuated with the Columbine massacre. The woman, authorities said, made threats before she traveled to Colorado, where she died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

A STEM school.  Going for extra credit on the anti-intellectualism.

[Athos_131]

“This is an epidemic,” Malone, who lives minutes from STEM School, spoke out on school shootings

Just before 2pm MDT on Tuesday, May 7th, a report surfaced in that there was yet another school shooting in a suburb of Colorado.

At the STEM School in Highlands Ranch, two shooters walked into the building just before school was released and opened fire on children and staff alike. By the time the terror had ended, eight students were injured and one of them had died. Both shooters are now in custody according to the New York Times.

That is why Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone made a point to begin his pregame press conference with a statement on the shooting.

“I wanted to start out with a quick word,” Malone stated with a rare shudder in his voice. “I think we are all aware of what happened down in Highlands Ranch today at the STEM School. That is a community that I live in. I know that thoughts and prayers are never enough, but one student was killed, (seven) were injured today. From myself, our team, our organization, our thoughts and prayers are with all of those families, those students, school administrators, everybody that was there today. It is a tragedy.”

Malone also made a point to pay his respects to the first responders who heroism likely saved many lives, but also made a separate point afterwards that relates to the terrifying amount lives that have been affected by this type of violence.

“The second thing that I would like to say is a thank you to the Douglas County Sheriffs Department that was there and on top of it in a matter of minutes and all of the first responders that were there and did not allow that to become worse than it was, but it is a shame,” Malone stated as the emotion of the moment was clearly becoming hard for him to manage. “My girls have been in lockout twice in the past month. I am not a politician and I do not have the answers, but something must change. I just wanted to make sure I acknowledged what happened today, in my backyard, and that all of those families are on my mind.”

For Malone, this shooting hit him hard because it was just two minutes away from his home in Highlands Ranch and resulted in both of his daughters, who were both in school just down the street, going into lockdown with no knowledge of where the shooter could be or if their lives were in danger.

“The school is literally two minutes from where I live,” Malone explained. “It is right down Broadway in Highlands Ranch.”

For Malone, once he left his house and family in the morning to conduct shootaround with his team, he never returned to his home in the quiet Highlands Ranch suburb of Denver. He instead does as he usually does; stayed in his office and continued to prepare for the game ahead, but on Tuesday afternoon, he received a phone call that eliminated all thoughts of basketball from his head. His wife called him and told him that both of his daughters’ schools were in lockdown as an active shooter shot round after round into students and Malone had no idea if his family was safe.

“I only found out about it when I was in my office and I got a call from my wife and she was the one that told me about it,” Malone explained. “The thing that makes you angry is that she is telling me how scared my daughters are in their schools texting her. They do not know what is going on. It is a lockout. ‘Where is this shooter? Is it at our school or some other school?’

“When kids go to school they should be going to school to learn, have fun, and be with their friends. Not worrying about an active shooter. We are all part of this, right? We all have families, kids, nieces, nephews, whatever it is. It is just frustrating and it gets you angry because it hits home. That is how I felt today.”

For Malone, he still has a game to coach on Tuesday night. His Nuggets squad is currently tied 2-2 in the second round of the playoffs against the Portland Trail Blazers, but when Game 5 comes and goes, he will still be left with two daughters that have to constantly live with the worry that a shooter could come into their school at any time and put their lives in danger. How does a parent even begin to have such a horrendous discussion with their child? For Malone, he has no answer.

“That is a great question,” Malone said when asked how he and his wife will discuss this issue with their daughters. “It is not something that I have really thought about. I am texting my daughter telling her she is going to be ok, but I do not even know if she will be ok. This is every partents worst nightmare.

“It is something that, when you see your kids go to school in the morning, you say ‘have a great day’ and you assume everything is just going to be alright, but as we all know, it is not. So you figure it out.”

For Malone, he wanted to send love to the families, victims, and all parties who were traumatized by the horrific events that unfolded at STEM School in Highlands Ranch, but he also wanted to make sure he hammered a particular point. This issue of school shootings is a plague — or as Malone put it, an epidemic — that is resulting in unnecessary deaths of children and that something needs to happen.

“It is not just Highlands Ranch. It is not just Colorado,” Malone stated angrily. “This is an epidemic and it continues to happen. That is the frustrating thing. How do you stop it? Gun control, laws, whatever it might be. I am not a politician and I do not want to sit up here and soapbox. I just want everybody back in Highlands Ranch to know that we are with you.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

More than 228,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine

#Resist

[joan1984]

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/8/devon-erickson-stem-school-highlands-ranch-shootin/ 

  Devon Ericson, 18 yo gunman, and second person, juvenile female, in custody and awaiting further investigation, charges, in CO school shooting.

  Authorities are very careful, seems about what information has been released so far. Female shooter(s) seems unusual to me, but not many comments so far.

[Athos_131]

A Half-Century of School Shootings Like
Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland

A shooting at a school in Highlands Ranch, Colo., on Tuesday in which one student was killed and eight others were injured swiftly drew comparisons to the 1999 attack on nearby Columbine High School and the dozens of shootings like it in the years since.

The attack was the fourth such school shooting in the Denver area and at least the 111th in the country since 1970, according to a New York Times analysis — the latest in a decades-long series of violent episodes that have shocked the nation and traumatized generations of students.

The Times examined hundreds of episodes in a database of shootings at elementary, middle and high schools to identify those cases where, like at Highlands Ranch and Columbine, the assailants planned their attacks and fired indiscriminately.

A total of 202 people were killed in these attacks and 454 were injured, including the shooters. In 16 cases, shots were fired but no one was injured.

Last year was particularly violent: 29 people were killed and 48 were injured in three shootings in Parkland, Fla.; Sante Fe, Tex.; and Benton, Ky.

Shootings of this type are rare relative to the larger universe of gun violence at schools, but they are common enough that lockdown drills and “run, hide, fight” exercises are part of the school experience all over the country. Before Highlands Ranch there was Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Before Marjory Stoneman Douglas there was Sandy Hook. Before Sandy Hook, Columbine, and before Columbine, Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, Calif.

The school shootings database, compiled by the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, is the most comprehensive and detailed of its kind. Researchers aimed to document all instances of gunfire at K-12 schools since 1970 and recorded a total of more than 1,300 cases. The database does not include shootings on college campuses.

The Times’s analysis identified the 111 cases that met the F.B.I.’s definition for an active-shooter scenario, in which an assailant is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people, on school property or inside school buildings. It excluded episodes that fit more typical patterns of gun violence such as targeted attacks, gang shootings and suicides.

These events have stunned much of the country and, in the case of the Parkland shooting, inspired a national student-led movement to tighten the nation’s gun laws. But they account for only a small fraction of the episodes of gun violence that children experience in American schools.

Other cases might include a student showing off a gun to friends in the hallway, the accidental discharge of a school resource officer’s gun, or a gang-related drive-by shooting at a school bus stop.

“There are shootings that occur in very wealthy counties and very poor counties, ones that happen in very diverse areas and very homogenous areas,” said David Riedman, a co-creator of the database.

Active shooters may attack anywhere, but a demographic analysis shows they tend to have traits in common. The majority of shooters were young white men or boys, many of them current or former students of the schools where they opened fire.

Some shooters followed a now-familiar blueprint. Peter Langman, a psychologist who studies school shooters, said younger assailants are especially likely to find inspiration in earlier events. “More than anyone else, people cite the Columbine killers,” Mr. Langman said.

That episode intensified a debate over gun violence that continues to divide the nation and drove districts to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to “harden” schools against threats.

The Highlands Ranch shooting similarly renewed old questions about gun access and how best to protect students from shootings. At a vigil for the victims on Wednesday, Colorado’s senior senator criticized the country’s gun laws.

Mr. Riedman, who spent hours poring over news reports and public records on hundreds of shootings to build the database, said school safety measures should take into account not only the incidents like Columbine but also the many other ways guns and schools can intersect in America.

“These shootings have been carried out by all sorts of people from students to total strangers,” Mr. Reidman said. “They’ve happened in any part of the country and they’ve happened for just about every reason, and that makes prevention very difficult. There can’t be any one single or simple solution that’s going to address this problem.”

If you click the link there are embedded graphics that better explain the findings.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Twelve people killed in shooting at Virginia Beach municipal complex, police say

A longtime municipal employee in Virginia Beach shot and killed 12 people Friday afternoon and injured several others inside a public works building before he was killed in a fierce gun battle with police, city officials said.

Police Chief James A. Cervera said an officer was among the wounded but was saved by his protective vest. He said the gunman “fired indiscriminately” with a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun on several floors of the building, one of many in the complex.

The chief said people were found wounded on all three floors and one was shot in a vehicle outside. He said four victims were in surgery Friday night but there might be others who sought treatment on their own.

Speaking at a late night news conference, Cervera, along with the mayor and Virginia’s governor, spoke in impassioned tones about the horror of what unfolded in a building used by as many as 400 workers as well as residents trying to obtain building permits, pay water bills or work through zoning issues.

The chief said police were working to notify family members of the slain victims, who were not identified Friday night. He said they have identified the shooter but would not make the name public until they could reach certain relatives.

Cervera said the shooter was armed with a gun with an attached sound suppressor and extended magazines, enabling him to fire many rounds and engage four police officers in what the chief described as a “longterm gunbattle” down building hallways.

“The officers stopped the suspect from doing more carnage in the building,” Cervera said.

The chief said authorities will name the shooter, who according to a city spokesman worked in the public utilities department, only once. Thereafter, “he will be forever referred to as the suspect. Our focus is on the dignity to the victims in this case and their families.”

Police had no immediate information as to a possible motive.

Mayor Bobby Dyer told reporters that “today is Virginia Beach’s darkest hour.” He said a “senseless crime happened and imposed tremendous grief upon the people of Virginia Beach, the Commonwealth and this country.”

Gov. Ralph Northam said the victims, shot near the end of the last day of the week, “were heading into the summer weekend. That they should be taken in this matter is the worst kind of tragedy.”

He added that the shooting, “tests our souls.”

Friday’s shooting added another city to the growing list of places affected by a mass shooting. It is the deadliest since February, when a warehouse employee in Aurora, Ill., opened fire after being told he would lose his job. That gunman killed five people and injured five police officers before dying in a shootout with law enforcement personnel.

Virginia Beach, a resort city with an population of about 450,000, is the most populous city in the state. It has nearly twice as many residents as Richmond. The municipal center is a sprawling compound of more than 30 buildings and annexes that includes City Hall, courts and offices for multiple city departments, a city directory shows.

The three-story Building 2, where the shooting occurred, has workers who inspect properties, issue building permits, handle zoning issues and deal with the complex issues of public works, from trash pickup to water distribution.

“It’s where all of our city business is located,” City Councilman Aaron R. Rouse said.

Edward Weeden, an office assistant in Building 2, said he was at the first-floor reception desk when he heard a sound coming from the direction of a staircase. He and another employee went toward it and found a woman lying at the bottom of the steps, he said.

The woman was not responsive and was bloodied, Weeden said. One of his co-workers ran upstairs to check on what happened and fled back down, announcing that there was a shooter.

Weeden ran out of the building as law enforcement began to swarm. “I thank God for getting me out of that building,” he said.

Megan Banton, who works in the public works building where the shooting occurred, said she was on the second floor when her supervisor heard a loud noise and told people to go into her office.

The sound of gunshots continued as about 20 people huddled on the floor after they barricaded the door with a desk. “We kept hearing gunfire,” Banton said. “We were trying to keep as quiet as possible.”

She said some people in the office were crying, while others appeared nervous and some remained silent.

Conditions of the surviving victims were not immediately available, and a precise count was not provided. Though police said four were in surgery, officials said there might be others. Hospital at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital reported two people in critical condition and two in fair condition. One patient at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in critical condition.

Banton, the employee who was on the second floor of the public works building, said she has an 11-month-old baby boy and sheltered in the office wondering if she would ever see him again.

“You never think this is going to happen to you. When it happens to you, it’s totally different,” Banton said.

Sheila Cook, who was in the courthouse in the complex, told a local television news station she heard muffled gunshots but knew it wasn’t in her building. She said police acted quickly to alert people that they were safe after the shooter had been apprehended.

“That was enough to make me feel safe enough to come outside, and that God was with us,” she said. She added, “I’m feeling shaken and relieved at the same time.”

Harold Gaskill, a supervisor in the permits and inspections office, was at home on his last day of a week-long vacation when news of the shooting broke. He said he spent the next two hours calling his workers and other colleagues to make sure they were okay. Everyone he knew made it through unharmed, he said.

Gaskill, 63, has worked for the city for 29 years. He said he works on the first floor of Building frequented by the public. He said he was told by co-workers that the shootings occurred on the second and third floors, where offices for public works and utilities are located.

“As far as I know, everyone in my office is okay,” Gaskill said. He added that he has not learned names of the dead or injured, or that of the shooter. “It’s just hard to believe right now,” he said. “I don’t understand it.”

“There is no way to describe an incident such as this,” Cervera said. “The suspect was immediately confronted . . . our citizens can rest easy tonight. We do not have someone out in the community to do more harm.”

#Resist

[horny guy]

did the shooting happen in a gun free zone? most shooting happen in the zones where self defence isn't allowed

[Athos_131]

‘Nothing short of horrific’: Three killed, including two children, in shooting at California food festival

GILROY, Calif. — The late afternoon sun beat down on Julissa Contreras as she browsed the offerings at a barbecue food tent at the Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday with her father and her boyfriend.

Then, Contreras said she noticed a man emerging from behind a row of tents at the popular summertime event in Gilroy, Calif. He was dressed in a military-style outfit and holding what appeared to be an assault rifle, she told The Washington Post. Four loud cracks rang out in quick succession. The man was shooting “left to right and right to left,” she said.

“Some people immediately knew what was going on and saw the guy and ran,” Contreras said. “Some people were still sitting there unsure.”

Three people were killed in the shooting, among them two children, a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl, authorities said. The third victim was a man in his 20s, they said. A dozen other people were injured.

“It’s sort of a nightmare that you hope you never have to live in reality,” Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said.

The attacker has been identified as Santino William Legan, a 19-year-old from the area, Smithee said at a briefing Monday morning.

Smithee said police engaged Legan in a gunfight within a minute and killed him, praising the officers for confronting the attacker so quickly. He also noted that they were outgunned — wielding handguns against a shooter firing an assault-style rifle — and said that without their prompt actions, “there absolutely would have been more bloodshed.”

Attempts to reach Legan’s relatives were not immediately successful Monday.

So far, early evidence in the case does not suggest that the shooting was connected to international terrorism, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official cautioned that investigators were still gathering evidence.

A shaken Smithee, speaking to reporters Monday morning, said that officials had not determined a possible motive for the shooting, warning that the investigation would be lengthy.

“It seems that this was a random act, but again, we’ve got a long way to go before we can come to a determination what his motivation was,” he said.

Police were searching for a possible second suspect in the case, Smithee said, although he added that it was unclear what role that person may have had or whether he or she was involved in shooting. Smithee said that police have heard multiple reports about the attacker having someone with him but that “different people gave different versions” of what they saw.

A swath of local, state and federal authorities were helping respond to the shooting. On Monday, the FBI said it has deployed an evidence recovery team of about 30 people to help scour the sprawling crime scene and mark and map evidence. They are also trying to help investigators determine whether the attacker was driven by a specific ideology.

“Our preeminent and principal concern at this point is motivation, ideological leanings,” Craig D. Fair, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office, said at a news briefing. “Was he affiliated with anyone or any group? It still has to be ruled out, still has to be determined, at this point.”

The first reports of gunshots at the festival came in around 5:41 p.m. local time, just as the event was wrapping up, Smithee said.

In an interview with NBC Bay Area, Alberto Romero confirmed that his 6-year-old son, Stephen, had died. The boy’s mother and grandmother were also shot and injured, the news station reported.

“I lost my son,” Alberto Romero told the news station. “There’s nothing I really can do besides try to be with him until I can put him in his resting spot.”

Romero later added: “My son had his whole life to live, and he was only 6.”

The shooter was carrying an “assault-type rifle,” the city of Gilroy said in a statement early Monday. Investigators believe the suspect entered the festival area by cutting through a perimeter fence, Smithee told reporters. He noted that security at the festival’s official entrances is “very tight,” despite a lack of posted security cameras. In addition to a police presence, attendees are subject to bag searches and metal-detector wanding, he said.

“It’s just incredibly sad and disheartening that an event that does so much good for our community has to suffer from a tragedy like this,” Smithee said.

By early Monday, the festival area was still the site of an “active investigation,” Gilroy Mayor Roland Velasco said during the news conference. Velasco said authorities “plan on being out there all night.”

At the scene after 11 p.m. local time, a steady stream of emergency vehicles and officers in tactical gear crossed back and forth across a line of police tape. Helicopters circled overhead. Dozens of officers were gathered on the park grounds. Many evacuees were stranded after the festival because their vehicles were parked inside an active crime scene. Some gathered on a bus outside the festival site, while others called ride-hailing services to get home.

“To have seen this event end this way, this day, is just one of the most tragic and sad things that I’ve ever had to see,” Brian Bowe, the festival’s executive director, said at the news conference. “We all feel so upset for those that are impacted — friends, families, neighbors. It’s just a horrible thing to experience, and we couldn’t feel worse.”

Edward and Jane Jacobucci were working at their Garlic Grater booth when gunshots echoed around the park. Jane said she saw the shooter up close.

“He was tall, young, thin. He had a camouflage outfit on with a big gun, and he was just going, ‘Boom, boom, boom!’ ” she told The Post.

Suddenly, her husband threw himself on top of her. “He actually threw me to the ground and just covered me, and then as soon as we heard it stop a little, we ran,” she said.

Meanwhile, Contreras said she and her father dived behind a food tent when the shooting started, separating from her boyfriend, Mario Camargo, who ran toward another group of tents. In their respective hiding spots, Contreras and Camargo both huddled with crying children and frantic parents as the mayhem unfolded around them. Some people froze, and others sprinted. Some appeared to play dead, Camargo told The Post.

Once they heard the gunfire stop, Contreras and Camargo each made a run for the entrance, eventually reuniting in the parking lot. Camargo said he saw two wounded people as he fled.

“One guy was able to talk. He was saying, ‘Just go! Just go!’ ” Camargo recalled. “People were crying, screaming, running in different directions. It was complete pandemonium.”

Videos uploaded to social media showed the chaotic scenes.

“What’s going on?” a person asked in one of the videos. Seconds later, a sharp crack echoed, prompting screams as people could be seen hustling to find shelter.

“Oh, they’re shooting,” a breathless voice could be heard saying.

Suzanne Lopez and Wendy Stroh had arrived 20 minutes early for their shift volunteering at the festival, around 5:40 p.m., when they heard an eruption of what sounded like fireworks and alerted emergency medical and security crews nearby.

“We turned to [the crews], we said, ‘It’s not firecrackers, it’s gunfire,’ ” Lopez recalled. “And then, they immediately got up, they gathered all of us, put us in the trailer.”

Lopez said there were 20 or so people in the trailer for hours, praying, receiving scant updates on what was happening outside from EMS crews, news sources and Facebook. She and Stroh were finally released around 11:20 p.m. local time.

“Why?” said Lopez of the shooting, “Really, that’s my question — why?”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called the incident “nothing short of horrific.” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (D) tweeted that the city’s police and fire department had been sent to Gilroy to help with what he called a “horrific shooting.” Smithee said officials in Gilroy were assisted by law enforcement agencies from across Santa Clara and Monterey counties. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ San Francisco field division and the FBI also responded to the scene, CBS News reported.

President Trump discussed the shooting during an event in Washington, condemning what he called the “wicked murderer” in California.

“We grieve for their families, and we ask that God will comfort them with his overflowing mercy and grace,” he said.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) tweeted that her office is “closely monitoring the situation.”

“Grateful to first responders who are on the scene in Gilroy and keeping those injured by such senseless violence in my thoughts,” she said.

The Gilroy Garlic Festival, founded in 1979, is billed as “the world’s greatest summer food festival” and draws thousands of visitors each year, marking a proud tradition for the small city. Hours after the shooting, electric highway signs still directed passersby to festival parking. A nearby Walmart had a mock Gilroy Garlic Festival float adorned with sunflowers and baskets of fresh garlic on sale.

As night fell, the sights were a grim reminder of what had transpired hours before. Residents lamented how a wholesome family gathering known for bringing people together to enjoy traditions like garlic ice cream was torn apart by gunfire.

“We have the wonderful opportunity in this community to celebrate our family through our garlic festival,” Bowe said early Monday. “For over four decades, that festival has been our annual family reunion. It is such a sad, just horribly upsetting circumstance that this happened.”

Witnesses at the scene said the chaos and bloodshed will be hard to shake. Contreras said there was one moment that she couldn’t stop thinking about. When the gunfire broke out, she looked in the direction of the gunman and saw children fleeing an inflatable slide, all trying to squeeze through the same tiny exit.

“I’m never going to forget that image,” she said.

#Resist

[Jed_]

With all these you hear the phrase, ‘Purchased legally.’

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[joan1984]

  Can a 18 year old Vote?

[Athos_131]

 Can a 18 year old Vote?

If they voted Democrat, you'd just call them on voter fraud.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

You can't sell guns where they sell alcohol, though.  So, that kid can get pissed off, walk across the street to the gun store (Wait a few days...)  

It doesn't have to be an Assault Rifle.  It doesn't have to be a machinegun, even a Brady Ban 10 round semi-automatic (I'm gonna say .40 calibers as it's a child of that era) can cause mass terror, and give that kid a sense of Power.

Okay, the minimum age?  He can vote, and he can Enlist.  If you're military, and under 25, it's not real hard to get a rental agreement, but if you take away their guns, you just have a proportionate rise in stabbings, arson, ax murders ...  That same kid can go into Dollar Tree to buy Chlorox, and Windex.  Threaded pipes, and matchheads.  For me, it was aluminum shavings from machineshop, and rust.  It's not rocket surgery, people are incredibly easy to kill.

"Oh, but he didn't kill that many people."  I've actually fielded this argument, seriously.

How many is a rampage?  Enough?  Enough.  

We invented guns.  Not America, but we can argue that we perfected them to a degree, (And snub the Nazis of a lot of credit there.)  Coming up with more creative ways to kill each other defines Humanity, throughout our history.  Open a history book, at random, and tell me which War, or Battle it's about, it's what we do.

Guns didn't make us evil, taking them away isn't going to make us any better.

[joan1984]

Met the requirement for State Of Nevada Law.

Was a U.S. Citizen, met age requirement, with a few thousand dollars.

State photo ID, no criminal record, passed Nevada required background check.

Oh, and the waiting period, whatever it may be.

The individual is the problem, not the firearm.

Would you feel better if he had stolen the firearm?

What has Governor Steve Sisolak been asked about this?

With all these you hear the phrase, ‘Purchased legally.’

[joan1984]

At least this one will not get to Vote.

 Can a 18 year old Vote?

If they voted Democrat, you'd just call them on voter fraud.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

Oh, and the waiting period, whatever it may be.

Whatever it may be is your problem, you just threatened to look it up.  You know, you'd do a lot better in these debates if you did any of the reading, right?

The individual is the problem, not the firearm.

Fortunately, they haven't banned Individuals yet.  You want to narrow that down?  

[Athos_131]

The individual is the problem, not the firearm.

Yeah, I notice you didn't respond about him being a racist shitbag.  You loved that.

#Resist