From CNN s Stella Chan
Employees at the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) had previous active shooter training at the facility where a gunman, Wednesday, opened fire and killed nine people.
“We provide law enforcement services to VTA, and we, our team had actually trained all VTA employees what to do in an active shooter and had done an exercise specifically in that building with VTA employees,” Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told CNN affiliate KGO Thursday morning.
“They were told to run, to hide, or to engage suspect. I don’t know what they did. We may have some heroes also with VTA, some of them may have lost their lives, but I think that they reacted as they should have, Smith added.
Authorities say a ninth co-worker has succumbed to his wounds. They're trying to determine why Sam Cassidy opened fire. They say he then turned the gun on himself.
First, the gunman set his house on fire.
Then he drove to work Wednesday morning and shot nine co-workers to death in two separate buildings at a San Jose light rail yard, after possibly setting explosives.
As Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies ran on scene just moments after the first 911 calls came in, he apparently shot himself to death.
Witnesses said the gunman wiped out most of the early shift at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority facility, in California’s worst mass shooting of the year and one of the deadliest in the country in 2021.
Advertisement
“What the hell’s going on in the United States of America?” Gov. Gavin Newsom asked at an afternoon briefing after meeting with members of the victims’ families. “What the hell’s wrong with us? … When are we going to put down our arms, literally and figuratively?”