San Jose shooter had huge stockpile of a DOZEN weapons and 22,000 rounds of ammo in house he blew up before rampage

SAN Jose light railway yard gunman Samuel Cassidy kept a huge cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives inside his home that he set on fire.

"An initial search of the suspect's residence discovered multiple cans of gasoline, suspected Molotov Cocktails, twelve firearms, and approximately twenty-two thousand rounds of ammunition," the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department released in a statement.

The 57-year-old light rail worker was regarded as "disgruntled" by the sheriff's and the mass shooting was described as a "planned event."

The statement described Cassidy as being "prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could had Sheriff's Deputies not made entry to stop his rampage."

Cassidy had set fire to his Angmar Court home loaded with the weaponry early Wednesday morning when he left for the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) rail yards to allegedly commit the bloodshed.

An assortment of mostly ammunition was photographed as evidence.

The pictures show several filled cellophane bags of loose bullets, as well as boxed ammunition, an assortment of magazines and clips as well as at least one pistol.

Some of them appeared to be melted down possibly as a result of being exposed to the flames brought on by fire at Cassidy's home.

The weapons haul was revealed after The Sun told how Cassidy warned colleagues he was "going to kill everybody in this place" for months before the rampage, according to a close friend of one of the victims.

“Gun nut” Cassidy killed nine of his co-workers ranging in age from 29 to 63 on Wednesday morning at two Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority buildings before taking his own life.

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Investigators and witnesses have said he may have targeted his victims while sparing other colleagues during the rampage.

Among those killed was Jose Hernandez III, a substation maintainer who worked on the same team as Cassidy.

One of Jose’s friends told The Sun that the 35-year-old had spoken about how VTA management were warned of “constant threats” made by Cassidy, 57, but took no action.

Speaking at a vigil for the victims on Thursday evening, Joe Bennetti, 35, said: “That guy (Cassidy) has been saying that s*** for months and they (his co-workers) reported it.

“Jose and that guy didn’t get along because that guy was constantly making threats," Bennetti said.

“They reported it to management and management didn’t want to do anything for fear of inciting him, so they just kind of brushed it off until this dude came in and did it. That’s the conversation Jose had with me.

“That was like in March, he didn’t mention him by name but he said there was a guy who was saying all this crazy stuff and he had mental problems and all these guns.

“I was like ‘Dude, you’ve got to tell somebody’ and he said ‘We tell them'," Bennetti continued.

“Once they figured out it was a guy on Jose’s team that did the shooting I realized it was the guy he had told me about.

“He (Cassidy) made the threat of doing what he did. He was like ‘I’m going to kill everybody in this place’ and he was a big gun nut.

"Jose told me Cassidy would openly boast about how he was into guns."

Santa Clara Sheriff Laurie Smith said on Thursday that Cassidy had been "very deliberate, very fast" during the attack.

She said: "It appears to us at this point that he said to one of the people there 'I’m not going to shoot you.'

"And then he shot other people. So I imagine there was some kind of thought on who he wanted to shoot."

A witness also claimed that the shooter "had a list of people that he was going to kill."

Kirk Bertolet, 64, who has worked for the VTA for 12 years and was on duty during the shooting, said: "He shot some people, he let another person live, and then he went around and shot everybody again."

Bertolet added that Cassidy "cooly waked by some people coming out of the other building … then he walked in that building and found his targets over there. He killed the people he wanted to kill."

Cassidy then took his own life with one pair of the weapons authorities say he was carrying just as law enforcement descended onto grounds.

Authorities confirmed that Cassidy did not engage in any gunfire with the responding officers.

Authorities say the 57-year-old shooter was heavily armed on Wednesday morning with three 9 mm handguns and 32 high-capacity magazines, some with 12 rounds.

The officials painted Cassidy as a "highly disgruntled VTA employee for many years,” and suspect those pent-up grievances may have inspired him to commit the attack.

Cassidy fired on his coworkers at around 6.30am throughout two buildings on the VTA premises.

Bomb squad team members were canvassing the premises after a batch of bomb materials were discovered inside Cassidy’s locker.

On Friday morning, the San Jose Police Bomb Squad shut down Angmar Court to remove and detonate explosives that were allegedly from Cassidy's home.

Prior to the mass shooting and purported suicide, Cassidy was captured on video getting ready to head to work for the last time.

Other surveillance footage from the day allegedly shows Cassidy calmly walking between the two buildings where he killed his co-workers.

The Sun has contacted VTA for comment but has not yet received a response.

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