The man who killed nine co-workers at the light rail yard in San Jose, California, had two semi-automatic handguns and 11 magazines on him, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith tells CNN’s Josh Campbell.
“I don’t know if he re-loaded, I don’t know the number of rounds that he fired, but of the people who were injured, none survived,” Smith said. “They were handguns of the type that would be legal in California.”
During a sweep of the scene, bomb sniffing dogs alerted to the suspect’s locker and found “precursor things for explosives and so then there was the fire at his house and I know there was another bomb squad there looking at and I know they found additional rounds of ammo,” Smith said.
She said the precursor devices included detonation pulls and “a lot more” found at the house but could not go into detail on the materials found. “A coward like him could have been planning to use it,” she said. “I don’t know, with nine victims and my heart goes out to them, who knows what he’s thinking.”
The shooting happened during the beginning of a shift but she is not sure if reports about the gunman targeting people are accurate at this point in the investigation. “Yeah, I have heard those things, I haven’t heard them officially so I’m not sure that he targeted certain individuals but I have heard some words said," the sheriff noted.
Smith mentioned timing of the fire at the gunman’s home and the shooting at the workplace.
“We got the call of shots fired at 6:34, the fire department got the call at 6:37 so he — either someone else set the fire which I don’t believe. It’s my opinion that he had some kind of device in his house to go off simultaneously perhaps but we don’t know that for sure, " she said.
It is still unknown if the gunman left a note but nothing was found at the VTA facility. Investigators are serving search warrants for the gunman’s car, house, phones, and social media to try to piece together a motive.
The shooter turned the gun on himself after opening fire on coworkers at the light rail yard early Wednesday.
All of the victims’ bodies have been removed from the scene. Smith says some sheriff’s office employees are related to victims.