LOS ANGELES, BALIPOST.com – Three people were killed and at least 15 others injured in a shooting at a major food festival in California on Sunday, police said.
Officers confronted and shot dead the suspect “in less than a minute,” said Scot Smithee, police chief of the city of Gilroy, 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of San Jose.
Police said it was “still an active crime scene” at the site of the three-day Gilroy Garlic Festival, one of the largest food festivals in the country.
A search for a possible second suspect was ongoing, Smithee said.
“We believe based on witness statements that there was a second individual involved in some way, we just don’t know in what way,” he told journalists.
Footage showed people fleeing in terror as shots rang out.
A witness named Julissa Contreras told NBC a white man in his 30s armed with a rifle opened fire indiscriminately.
“I could see him shooting in just every direction. He wasn’t aiming at anyone specifically. It was just left to right, right to left,” Contreras said, according to NBC.
“He definitely was prepared for what he was doing,” she said.
Smithee said the suspect appeared to have entered the 50-acre festival site via a creek, using cutting equipment to breach the event’s perimeter.
Metal detectors and bag searches were in place as part of “very tight security” at the festival, he said.
No motive was known but the suspect’s shooting appeared “somewhat random,” Smithee added. The suspect used “some sort of a rifle,” he said.
US President Donald Trump earlier tweeted that law enforcement officers were at “the scene of shootings” in Gilroy, urging members of the public to “Be careful and safe!” (AFP)
