When Fallen Reality Strikes: A Story From Gilroy

Everyone thinks they know what they will do in a violent situation, but do they really? Are Christians prepared to confront violence with a biblical response?

Violence is one of those things that often does not allow for a slow, prayerful response. Violence often requires immediate action—either to save a life, to take one, or to save one by taking another.

For the vast majority of people in the developed world, their notion of violence is entirely informed by what they see on TV or in movies. What happens when they are confronted with reality?

This is a short story of one man confronted with reality.

On July 28, 2019, a 19-year-old broke into the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. He used wire cutters to cut through the fence, and as soon as he was in the vicinity of people, he began shooting. He killed a six-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 20-year-old, and wounded 17 others before plainclothes Gilroy PD officers identified the threat and returned fire. Their response time was excellent—about as fast as a human being can respond. Moreover, their target identification was excellent. Identifying a threat in a mass shooting, where some people are running for their lives and some are frozen in fear, can be extremely challenging. Failure to properly identify your target as a threat or non-threat can result in the killing of more innocent people. Gilroy PD immediately responded to the sound of gunfire, identified their target, and successfully engaged the shooter, who, upon realizing that he had been shot, took his own life with his weapon.

I was the FBI Special Agent on duty at the San Francisco Field Office and was tasked with supporting the investigation, which the FBI initially opened as a Domestic Terrorism investigation.

As the FBI began to reconstruct the scene—before, during, and after the shooting—we gathered valuable evidence. However, there was some question at the time as to the number of shooters. Was there only one? Or perhaps more? Some witnesses had reported seeing two shooters.

As a young Special Agent, I was intent on finding that second shooter, if he indeed existed. In one interview of many, I thought I was about to find him.

I was interviewing a man who claimed to have been attending the festival with his two young daughters, one of whom was eight years old. This man was the biggest man I have ever seen in real life. He was about 6'3", 280 lbs. He had multiple tattoos that suggested he had done some jail time. He walked into the interview room silently and firmly. I immediately sensed that there was something more.

A short time into the interview, when asked about what he was doing with his daughters at the time the shooting started, this grown man began to cry. My heart began to race, thinking that I was about to find the second shooter—that this man was going to confess right there in the interview room.

Instead, he said, amidst his sobs:

"When the shooting started, I just ran, man. I don't know how long I ran. Maybe it was 30 seconds. Maybe it was two minutes. After a while, I stopped running, and I realized that I had... that I had left my girls. I left them behind and I ran away. When I realized what I had done, I ran back to where we were sitting. My eight-year-old was sitting on a hay bale, and right where she was sitting... I saw a girl who had been shot in the head. She was on the ground. I thought it was her... I thought it was my daughter, man."

The gentleman could not talk much more after that confession. It turned out that it was not his daughter. His older daughter had taken his younger daughter and hidden in one of the portable toilets until the shooting was over. He found his daughters, and they were okay.

More than any other detail of this investigation, that moment stands out in my mind. This man was certainly capable of fighting and probably had. I suspect that he probably had the same attitude that everyone else has from the comfort of their own home: "I know what I'd do." But when reality strikes, usually in an unexpected way, our fallen survival mechanisms kick in. For this man, his brain said, "Flight." Only later, with no idea of how much time had passed, was he able to realize just how wrong he had been. He was deeply ashamed, and his tears were tears of guilt. His daughters had lived, but for a moment, he thought that he had left them to die, and his mind was coming to grips with that fact. Although his daughters survived, the shock of reality will probably stay with this man forever. It will stay with me too.

As a consequence of the fall, man in his most natural state is entirely concerned with his own survival. Modern science, as an extension of God's general revelation, proves this. In his book The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes, "The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary" (The Body Keeps the Score, 55).

Even those of us who enjoy the communion of the Holy Spirit are subject to being deceived not just by outward forces but by our fallen intellect. It is arrogant to think, without experience, "I know what I'd do." David did not sit at home imagining what he would do when he fought bears or lions. He was in the pasture fighting bears and lions, and so when a bigger threat came in the person of Goliath, he was able to say, "I know what to do and I know what I will feel while doing it."

Don't let your fallen intellect deceive you—you don't know what you will do.