CUPERTINO, Calif. — In the first extended comments from the VTA shooter’s family, Sam Cassidy’s elderly father said Friday his son was “bipolar,” but didn’t show signs of committing the massacre that left nine coworkers dead this week in the Bay Area’s deadliest mass shooting.
“I didn’t realize how bad his bipolar was,” James Cassidy, 89, said outside his Cupertino home. “When we saw him, he was generally an ordinary guy.”
Cassidy said his son’s mental illness was “no excuse” for the shooting rampage Wednesday morning at the rail yard in San Jose that has shocked the South Bay and shaken the transit agency where the younger Cassidy worked maintaining substations for the light-rail line.
To the families of the victims, he said, “I don’t think anything I could say could ease their grief. I’m really, really very sorry about that.”
Armed with three handguns and dozens of rounds of ammunition early Wednesday morning, Samuel Cassidy, 57, called “highly disgruntled” by authorities, killed six coworkers from his own morning crew before gunning down three other employees — two light rail operators and a supervisor — in an adjacent building. When police arrived minutes later, he turned the gun on himself. He had fired off dozens of rounds of ammunition, and on Friday the authorities released a shocking photo of the arsenal of ammunition and weapons they later seized from Sam Cassidy’s home.
Two days before the shooting, Cassidy had visited his parents in Cupertino, said his father as he loaded up groceries on the seat of his walker after a trip to the market Friday afternoon.
“He came over to help his mom with her car,” he said. “She had to get it smogged and stuff. He seemed fine.”
There were no lingering goodbyes, he said, “no hint” of what was to come.
Exactly what motivated Cassidy to kill the men he worked with every day is uncertain, but the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Cassidy was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as he was returning to the U.S. from the Philippines in 2016, carrying “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,” according to a Department of Homeland Security memo circulated after the shooting. Local authorities say they were not previously aware of such a report.
Videotape from a neighbor’s security camera showed Cassidy loading up a black duffel bag into his truck early Wednesday morning. He apparently set a timing device to ignite a fire at his home in South San Jose, which burned so hot, the second floor collapsed.
Authorities, including the FBI, are sifting through the charred remains hoping for more evidence. Meanwhile, families of the nine victims, all men ranging in age from 29 to 63, were going through the grim task of making funeral arrangements.
Cassidy’s father said he and his wife rarely saw their son and were blindsided by the tragedy.
“We literally didn’t see him unless we asked him to come over and fix something,” he said, “so we didn’t have any clue what was going on with his work or in his personal life.”
Cassidy would occasionally ask how his son’s work was going, he said, but “he was always noncommittal about that.
“He never really indicated anything was wrong at all.”
