‘We thought it was firecrackers.’ Modestan recounts panic of Garlic Festival shooting
Armando Victoria and his family were excited to attend the Gilroy Garlic Festival for the first time. The sights, smells and sounds simply epitomize the classic American summer festival.
“I was born and raised in Gilroy,” said Victoria, who now lives in Modesto. “But after all these years, this was finally my first time.”
Victoria, his 5-months-pregnant wife and their 1-and-a-half-year-old son arrived Sunday at around 3 p.m. They breezed through the security, Victoria said. He noted the lack of metal detectors, the brief and uninterested glances into bags, and the apparent abandonment of the security wands by the guards at the event making the lines move swiftly.
“I walked right by them,” he said. “I don’t think security was taking their job seriously. I’d been to music festivals where the security was a lot tougher and you couldn’t bring anything past them. At (the Garlic Festival), the security was basically nonexistent.”
So, they walked in and began their quest for fun garlic-flavored snacks, poking around the different booths and entertainment options, surrounded by the thousands of other festival-goers. At one point, Victoria mentioned to his friend how it would be fun for their kids, who are around the same age, to go on the bounce-house at the festival.
“But the kids weren’t tall enough to get on the jumping house,” Victoria said. Turning away, they walked to the opposite end of the festival toward the ranch side.
Just 10 minutes later, shots rang out. Four people were killed — a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl, a man in his 20s and the 19-year-old gunman, according to local authorities. Twelve others were injured.
“We thought it was firecrackers at first, but then looking around people started yelling and running toward us,” Victoria said. The once-fun festival erupted in chaos and fear, people fleeing for their lives while scrambling to ensure their loved ones were still alive.
For Victoria, he felt lucky to be familiar with the area. He knew where to go and how to get to their car quickly. As they were walking along bike paths adjacent to the park where the festival was located, he heard others speaking on their phones about what had happened.
The firecracker sounds were gunshots. People were dead. Police were responding.
Reality and fear hit Victoria. He barely slept Sunday night. He stayed home on Monday to take care of his wife, who felt sick after the stress of the event.
Then, on Monday afternoon, pictures of a man walking around Modesto with a long, slender item in his hands wearing camouflage pants circled around social media, inciting panic in Victoria of a shooter in his town just hours after the tragedy in Gilroy.
“I know the gunman got shot down,” Victoria said. “But it was scary just thinking that there could be someone in Modesto right after. It could’ve given more people the idea to go out and shoot people.”
Though local authorities later calmed the public down by ensuring them they were keeping a diligent eye out, Victoria said he is still worried.
“We wanted to go to the Watsonville Strawberry Festival coming up soon, but now I don’t think we want to go at all,” he said. “This guy brought in a gun from another state. I thought California was supposed to have stricter gun laws. It could happen anywhere.”
Victoria said he might owe his life to his kid as well as his friend’s kid.
“If our kids had been taller and they had been able to go into the jumping house, we would have been on that side of the festival,” he said. “And that was the side the gunman was shooting in.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2019 at 7:46 PM with the headline "‘We thought it was firecrackers.’ Modestan recounts panic of Garlic Festival shooting."
