Active shooter reported at food festival in California - police

(Reuters) - An active shooter was reported at a food festival in California on Sunday and a police spokesman said there are casualties.

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Few other details were immediately available. NBC Bay Area reported that ambulance crews were told 11 people "were down" after shots rang out at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, an annual event in south of San Jose.
Videos posted on social media appeared to show festival attendees scattering in confusion as at least one loud popping sound could be heard in the background.
"What's going on?" a woman can be heard asking on one video. "Who'd shoot up a garlic festival?"

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GILROY — Police are at the scene of an apparent shooting with more than one person hit at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, authorities said.

Police responded to the festival grounds at Christmas Hill Park near Miller Avenue and Uvas Park Drive around 5:30 p.m., but few details of the shooting were immediately available.

A dispatcher answering a Gilroy police line said an inquiry about the reports was ‘inappropriate’ and sent a caller to voicemail.

Evenny Reyes, 13, spent the day at the festival with her friends and some relatives.

“We were just leaving and we saw a guy with a bandana wrapped around his leg because he got shot. And there were people on the ground, crying,” said Reyes. “There was a little kid hurt on the ground. People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.”

Reyes said she didn’t run at first, because the gunshots sounded like fireworks. “It started going for five minutes, maybe three. It was like the movies — everyone was crying, people were screaming.”

As of 6:40 p.m., Katherine Filice, who has headed the festival’s promotional effort for several years, said the PR team members were “all OK” but that she had no further information as the situation at Christmas Hill Park was still fluid.

The shooting occurred as the 41st annual event — one of the nation’s most famous food festivals — was wrapping up its three-day run. Besides drawing food lovers from around the country, the festival serves as Gilroy’s top fund-raiser for the year, with volunteers staffing the event to earn money for their clubs, schools and other nonprofit groups. Since 1979, the festival has raised more than $11.7 million for local nonprofits and schools.

6 pm was the closing time, but the entrance gates were to have closed one hour prior to that.

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Comment by Chris of the family Masters on July 29, 2019 at 1:17pm: Iranian descent? that does it....

Comment by Parrhesia on July 29, 2019 at 10:01am: Santino William Legan, 19, has been identified by CBS News as the suspect in the mass shooting.

Legan, Who Identifies as Being of Italian & Iranian Descent, Posted on Instagram Before the Shooting

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0esvPyJMiq/

Legan has an Instagram page with just three posts. The one most disturbing appears to have been posted shortly before the shooting.

“Ayyy garlic festival time. Come get wasted on overpriced shit.”

Police Have Been Searching For the Second Suspect Around the Densely Wooded Park Area Since Sunday Evening & the Feds Are Involved https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/santino-william-legan/

Comment by Central Scrutinizer on July 29, 2019 at 9:12am: Gilroy Cali, Home of the Artsy Fartsy, Democrat, Self-entitled Elitist Artist.... At least they picked a decent locale

Maybe they didn't care for Garlic???

Comment by Burbia on July 29, 2019 at 5:14am: BREAKING: ATF responding to mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California- https://t.co/LmTR5aAhiZ

pic.twitter.com/5T5eAS0yDB
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 29, 2019