Adrian Balleza was a Gilroy resident who was killed in Wednesday’s mass shooting at the Valley Transportation Authority light rail yard in San Jose.
The early morning shooting at the rail yard left nine people, including the shooter, dead.
Balleza was married and had a young son.
Age
He was 29 years old.
San Jose Rail Yard Shooting
A gunman opened fire Wednesday morning at a public transit rail yard in San Jose, California, killing at least eight co-workers and wounding at least one other person, Deputy Russell Davis of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
Davis said the gunman, an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), is dead. He has been identified as Sam Cassidy, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation confirmed to CNN.
Mayor Sam Liccardo told CNN’s Jake Tapper the gunman was no stranger to the people he shot.
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“It’s clear the victims and all the colleagues knew the shooter well,” Liccardo said.
Victims
The victims ranged in age from 29 to 63, according to the medical examiner.
They were identified by the medical examiner as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; and Lars Kepler Lane, 63.
Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said the victims worked together and were there in the morning together.
Suspect
The man who shot and killed eight people at a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail yard Wednesday was identified as Samuel Cassidy, 57, a San Jose resident and VTA employee.
Cassidy died at the scene of the mass shooting at the Guadalupe maintenance yard at 101 W. Younger Ave. Santa Clara County Sheriff Deputy Russell said it’s believed Cassidy took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound since responding officers did not exchange gunfire with him.
He had worked for Valley Transportation Authority since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database Transparent California, first as a mechanic from 2012 to 2014, then as someone who maintained substations.
According to public records, Cassidy earned more than $114,000 in regular and overtime pay along with an additional $46,000 in benefits in 2019.
Police Report
Investigators are looking into the gunman’s motive, he said. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he did not know whether there may have been any red flags about the shooter’s intentions.
The shooter had more than one gun, the district attorney said
Police also received information about explosive devices inside the transit building, which the bomb squad investigated, officials said.
In addition, a house that erupted in flames in San Jose around the same time as the shooting is believed to be the gunman’s home, a source close to the investigation told CNN.
