SAN JOSE — As authorities continued to piece together what triggered a Valley Transportation Authority maintenance worker’s rail yard massacre Wednesday, employees at the transit agency recounted that the gunman, Samuel Cassidy, was a loner known for sudden outbursts directed at colleagues.
A month before the massacre, Cassidy lost his temper over the light rail radio system, a notable breach of accepted etiquette. He had also complained about payroll and vacation issues at work, coworkers told the Bay Area News Group Friday.
Also Friday, authorities revealed they found a dozen guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition and improvised incendiary devices inside Cassidy’s San Jose home.
The revelations add to the developing picture of Cassidy, 57, as a highly disgruntled VTA employee whose malevolent intentions grew in recent months along with his frustration. Ultimately he lashed out at his workplace, carefully selecting the nine victims killed in the rampage.
Last month, when an operations center employee asked Cassidy to call the center directly about completing a task, Cassidy said several times in an angry tone that he wouldn’t do so, according to an employee who heard the exchange.
The radio connects over 100 employees and is used for daily communications, and blowing up on the radio is highly unusual, the employee said, adding that he’d only seen such behavior four or five other times in his decade-plus career at the agency. The employee, who asked not to be identified, did not immediately recognize Cassidy’s voice at the time, but confirmed it was him with other coworkers immediately after the exchange, he said.
“He sounded angry — oh yeah, you could tell, he was angry,” said the worker. “It’s kind of like being mean to a stewardess. You’re mean to a stewardess, either you’re off the plane or you’re barred. Same thing, if you say something nasty to (Operations Control Center), they’re going to report it, and things are going to happen. They’re going to come in and talk to you about it.”
The employee and another coworker said it was known around the VTA workplace that Cassidy had been angry about recent changes to vacation rules. In the past, employees could “turn in” unused vacation days in exchange for direct pay, but those days must now be used as genuine days off, a change they said had apparently frustrated Cassidy.
The second VTA worker, who also did not want to be identified, said he knew the nine victims killed on Wednesday, and described them as hardworking family men. Cassidy, he said, stood out.
“I ran across him many times. I’d say hey and make eye contact and he would always look away or never acknowledge the interaction at all. Everybody thought he was just a little bit odd,” the worker said. “I had no idea he was dangerous but I’m not surprised either. There was something wrong with his wiring is the way I would describe it.”
Cassidy’s ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, told this news organization Friday that he would sometimes say that he wanted to beat or kill colleagues, during the eight years of their marriage that he worked at VTA, though she said he did not name anyone specifically. Nelms, 64, of Santa Cruz, said that when Cassidy complained about co-workers, both during his time at the VTA and previously at a car dealership, he would say, “I’m just a number, who cares? I wish I were dead.” She said she heard that statement from him about eight times during their marriage.
VTA spokesperson Stacey Hendler Ross said in a statement Friday that the agency was “reviewing all VTA records that pertain to Mr. Cassidy,” to see if he said or did anything that made employees “fearful or uneasy.” VTA and the president of the union representing maintenance workers said Cassidy was not facing any disciplinary hearings at the time of the shooting.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office revealed Friday that investigators found a small arsenal of weapons, including more than a dozen Molotov cocktails, inside Cassidy’s home on Angmar Court.
Investigators found a dozen firearms including handguns, shotguns and rifles, and more than 25,000 rounds of ammunition that were “strategically placed around the dwelling, giving him quick access to deadly force wherever he was inside the house,” the sheriff’s office said.
Deputy Russell Davis also confirmed that Cassidy set his home on fire early Wednesday morning, but did so with a contraption that ensured the fire only captured neighbors’ attention long after he had left to carry out the Bay Area’s deadliest mass shooting.
“He put a pot full of bullets on the stove, then placed accelerant around the stove, to set the house on fire,” Davis said.
Midday Friday, technicians detonated a bundle of batteries and wires found in the house on the chance that they might be explosive. After the device was safely disposed of, local and federal law enforcement agencies concluded their three day search of Cassidy’s charred home and reopened the court to residents.
The startling cache of weapons recovered from Cassidy’s home — in addition to the three handguns and 32 loaded illegal high-capacity magazines he was carrying at the shooting site — have convinced authorities that the attack, and his attempt to burn his tracks, were long in the works.
FBI officials have said the blaze significantly hindered the recovery of evidence, such as computers and other materials, which might have provided information about why Cassidy carried out the shooting, and how long he had planned it.
Local officials also said this week that they were not aware that Cassidy had been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as he was returning to the U.S. from the Philippines in 2016. According to a Wall Street Journal report Thursday, a Department of Homeland Security memo circulated after this week’s shooting said that Cassidy was found in possession of “books about terrorism and fear and manifestos … as well as a black memo book filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA.”
In a statement late Thursday, San Jose Police said Cassidy’s detention by CBP “was not reported to SJPD.”
“Whatever this detention at the border was, it did not result in an arrest that showed up on his FBI criminal history, and it was not reported to SJPD,” the statement said. Officer Steven Aponte on Friday added, “to my knowledge, we have not seen a memo from DHS.”
The sheriff’s department said Friday that it could not comment on whether or not they not they were aware of CBP’s contact with Cassidy. VTA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
But Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith said Friday that local officials had not been made aware of CBP’s contact with Cassidy.
“Certainly it’s concerning,” Smith said. “I don’t know why we wouldn’t get notified. It sounds like the kind of activity that happened at the airport was significant. I would think they would notify the Sheriff’s Department or police department where the person lives.”
Staff writer Ethan Baron contributed reporting.
