As a former resident of Santa Cruz and attendee of the Garlic Festival, this hits very close to home. The scariest part of the garlic festival should be your friends convincing you to try the garlic ice cream, not being a victim of something so violent.
My heart goes out to the victims. While this is still an unspeakable tragedy, thankfully the QUICK response by LE stopped this from being something infinitely worse.
There is considerable gang presence in the surrounding areas and it does sometimes find its way into the garlic festival, so in recent years the event has had a fairly heavy police presence to keep an eye out for such things. While I'm sure they weren't expecting something of this magnitude, they definitely were prepared to respond and probably saved dozens upon dozens of lives as a result.
After hearing the stories of many attendees, it seems like SO many people jumped to action to protect and help others at the risk of their own safety. In the wake of such a tragedy, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the unspeakable evil that commits such atrocious acts. However, I find a lot of comfort and a restored faith in humanity in hearing about the many many people who instinctively protected and provided aid to strangers. The goodness in humanity shall always outnumber the evil.
My heart goes out to the victims. While this is still an unspeakable tragedy, thankfully the QUICK response by LE stopped this from being something infinitely worse.
There is considerable gang presence in the surrounding areas and it does sometimes find its way into the garlic festival, so in recent years the event has had a fairly heavy police presence to keep an eye out for such things. While I'm sure they weren't expecting something of this magnitude, they definitely were prepared to respond and probably saved dozens upon dozens of lives as a result.
After hearing the stories of many attendees, it seems like SO many people jumped to action to protect and help others at the risk of their own safety. In the wake of such a tragedy, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the unspeakable evil that commits such atrocious acts. However, I find a lot of comfort and a restored faith in humanity in hearing about the many many people who instinctively protected and provided aid to strangers. The goodness in humanity shall always outnumber the evil.