California festival gunman identified as two children and adult dead

A 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s were killed when a gunman opened fire with an assault-type rifle at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in northern California, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said.

The weapon, an AK-47-style rifle, was purchased legally by the gunman in Nevada on July 9, Smithee told reporters at a news conference Monday.

The suspect - identified as Santino William Legan, 19 - also injured at least 12 others before he was fatally shot on Sunday night by three officers who responded within a minute of the gunfire beginning, Smithee said.

Of the injured, seven people remain in hospitals.

Legan apparently entered the annual festival, which attracts about 100,000 people every year, by cutting through a back fence and then began shooting at random, the chief said.

Smithee credited a heavy police presence for saving lives as chaos descended on the decades-old festival in Gilroy, a city about 30 miles south of San Jose.

"I think it's very, very fortunate that they were able to engage him as quickly as they did," he said.

Authorities earlier said they were searching for a second person who witnesses said may have been involved in the shooting.

But on Monday, Smithee said multiple people had given differing versions of this person, "so we really don't know at this point".

"Also, the FBI searched a Walker Lake, Nevada, residence believed to have been used by the gunman prior to the shooting," according to Mineral County District Attorney Sean Rowe.

Instagram posts before shooting

An Instagram account bearing the suspect's name, created four days ago, posted two messages shortly before the attacks, including a reference to a white supremacist text.

One post was a photo of people walking around the Garlic Festival with the words "Ayyy garlic festival time Come get wasted on overpriced s---."

The other post, made about an hour later, showed a sign of Smokey Bear saying "Fire Danger High Today."

"Read Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard," the caption said.

"Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos and Silicon Valley white t----?"

A "mestizo" is a person of mixed descent, usually white and Hispanic, or white and American Indian.

"Might is Right" is a book published in the late 1800s which has been described as a white supremacist text that promotes anarchy, vilifies Christianity and calls Jesus the "true Prince of Evil."

The natural order, according to the book, is a world at war in which the strong must vanquish the weak, and white men must rule over those of color.

Josh Carman told CNN he knew Legan from high school, but didn't know him well.

When he was a senior at Gilroy High School, Legan was a sophomore."I never had any classes with him or anything, so we never really got acquainted, I just have definitely seen him around school," he said.

"He wasn't the type of person that everyone knew, but he didn't stand out as being too abnormal," he said.

Tanner Eastus, another Gilroy High School student, told CNN that "[Legan] seemed like a normal guy. I don't believe anyone expected anyone to do something like this, especially in Gilroy."

A 6-year-old killed

Stephen Romero, 6, was killed during the shooting, Gilroy City Council member Fred M. Tovar told CNN.Tovar said he was "deeply saddened by the news."

"I pray that God will grant his family strength. My most sincere condolences. I will keep your family close in my thoughts and prayers in the coming weeks as you are going through the process of grieving," he said in a statement.

Stephen's grandmother spoke to CNN affiliate KRON about the boy's death.

"This is really hard, there's no words to describe (it)," Romero's grandmother told the affiliate. 

"He was such a happy kid, I don't think that this is fair."

Stephen's father, Alberto Romero, told CNN affiliate the San Jose Mercury News newspaper that he was at home when his wife called to say that she, her mother and their son had been shot.

"I couldn't believe what was happening, (I thought) that what she was saying was a lie, maybe I was dreaming," he said.

The dad went to a hospital to see his son.

"They told me he was in critical condition and that they were working on him," he said.

"Five minutes later they told me he was dead."