A shooting that erupted in the early hours of Wednesday morning at a light rail maintenance yard in San Jose, California, has left at least nine people dead, including the gunman. Local leaders have described the violence as a “terrible, terrible” tragedy as authorities search for a motive. Authorities reported on Wednesday that there were about 40 people at the facility at the time the shootings occurred and the gunfire erupted in two separate buildings. Police say the shooter was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which operates the light rail facility in Silicon Valley. The shooting began around 6.30am local time in a facility that stores trains and serves as a transit control center, and the victims include employees of the facility. In addition to the nine dead, one victim is in critical condition at a local hospital. “These folks were heroes during Covid-19. The buses never stopped running, VTA didn’t stop running,” said Cindy Chavez, a Santa Clara county supervisor. “They just kept at work, and now we’re really calling on them to be heroes a second time to survive such a terrible, terrible tragedy.” Plans were under way for a vigil at the San Jose city hall on Thursday evening. “These are the women and men who supported our community through this pandemic,” said San Jose’s mayor, Sam Liccardo, at a press briefing. “They showed up to work every day as essential workers, despite risks to their own health. We owe them and their families so much ... For now, we need to focus on everything we can do to support these families and their loved ones.” Governor Gavin Newsom, who cancelled another event to rush to the scene, described gun violence in the US as an epidemic. “This happens again and again – rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat,” he said. “It begs the question what the hell is going on in America?” Newsom spoke emotionally in front of a county office where flags flew at half-staff. He said victims’ relatives were “waiting to hear from the coroner, waiting to hear from any of us, just desperate to find out if their brother their son, their dad, their mom is still alive”. Kamala Harris, the vice-president and a former senator of California, and Pete Buttigieg, the transport secretary, have also lamented the violence. “Transit workers have kept the traveling public safe this past year – we must do the same for them,” Buttigeig said in a statement. Meanwhile, dozens of family members have streamed into a reunification center set up in a county building. “They’re just sitting and holding hands and crying,” said Jeff Rosen, the district attorney of Santa Clara county, describing the scene. “It’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s raw.” Raul Peralez, a local city council member, said he was waiting to hear from a close friend who worked at the transit center. “This hits close to home for me,” he said. “I have a close friend – I’m still waiting for his status. He’s been a friend since middle school. His wife is on her way down here now.” “Not even knowing that information is devastating and I can understand how so many families are feeling right now,” he said. The violence began early on Wednesday morning. Raj Singh, a union leader with the VTA operators union, told the Mercury News that the shooting occurred during the busiest time of day at the light rail facility, when employees are reporting to work and getting ready to start transit service. Laurie Smith, the sheriff of Santa Clara county, said sheriff’s deputies entered the building while the shots were still being fired, but did not fire upon the suspect. The active shooter rescue team “ran into the building as shots were being fired. And I know that it saved many lives,” Smith said. “We had some heroics that I think resulted in a diminished loss of life.” Multiple news reports have identified the attacker as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, citing law enforcement sources. Authorities said the shooter took his own life. A spokesperson for the Santa Clara sheriff’s office said bomb sniffing dogs detected explosives at the shooting scene. The authorities are bringing in a bomb robot to scan the scene. “They are searching every crevice of the building,” he said. The sheriff’s department confirmed in a press conference that it was investigating whether the shooting was related to one or more fires that broke out in San Jose around the same time. The San Jose fire department responded to a large house fire at 6.36 am, and another fire in a commercial area at 6.26 am. Both were reported just moments before the shooting at the rail yard, which is a few minutes’ drive away. FBI spokesman Craig Fair said the FBI is flying in extra assistance from the agency’s resource center at Quantico, Virginia. San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the US with more than a million people, is about 50 miles south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley. Wednesday’s attack was the county’s second mass shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019. According to the San Jose Mercury News, it was the deadliest mass shooting in the Bay Area since 1993, when eight people and a gunman were killed at the 101 California Street skyscraper in San Francisco.