Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting victims allege weak security in lawsuit
The victims who were injured during a mass shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., have filed a lawsuit against the event’s organizers over what they say was a lack of security that allowed the shooting to occur.
The San Francisco-based Scarlett Law Group filed the lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of five people who were injured during the shooting in July, according to the Mercury News. The shooting left three people dead and 14 others injured.
{mosads}“I was under the impression that all things were safe and under control” at the festival, Wendy Towner, one of the shooting victims, said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “It’s been hard to think that we weren’t safe out there.”
The lawsuit alleges “negligent security measures” gave the shooter the ability to enter the festival, according to the news outlet.
“The lawsuit filed today stemming from a horrific act of domestic terrorism, is not unexpected, and we will respond through the appropriate legal channels,” the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association wrote in a statement, the news outlet notes. “As a non-profit organization, we must remain focused on our mission: fundraising for the entire community of Gilroy and the more than 150 charities that rely on us.”
Authorities found that the shooter, identified as 19-year-old Santino Legan, entered the festival by cutting through a perimeter fence.
Legan died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound as police officers responded to the shooting.
The FBI launched a domestic terrorism investigation shortly after the deadly shooting. Authorities say Legan was in possession of white supremacist and anti-Islam literature at his home as well as supplies for a large-scale attack.
The lawsuit focuses on what the plaintiffs’ attorneys say were “inadequate and outdated security policies” and measures that failed to account for the modern-day threats posed to large festivals and events that draw tens of thousands of people, according to the Mercury News.
The lawsuit alleges the perimeter fence was an “inadequate, flimsy, low-height unsupported chain link fence that was simple to breach, located inappropriately where the shooter’s presence and entrance would be concealed by a wooded area.”
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages, including money to cover the survivors’ medical bills and their loss of earnings in the future from the injuries they sustained.