WALKER LAKE, Nevada — It’s hard to imagine a more isolated place within a day’s drive from the Bay Area than this tiny, barren town where a mass killer spent recent months before he was shot dead by police in Gilroy.
Two hours south east of Reno, ramshackle Walker Lake is nestled between the shimmering body of water that bears its name and the sprawling Wassuk Range, accessible only by a single road: U.S. Highway 95. It’s an easy place to be anonymous.
It is here that Santino Legan, 19, the man who calmly sprayed semi-automatic gunfire at people attending the last day of the Gilroy Garlic Festival Sunday, killing three and wounding 12 others, holed up in the weeks before the shooting. Doing so would have helped him establish Nevada residency so he could legally buy an assault rifle banned in California.
Legan leased the unfurnished center apartment — paying three months’ rent in cash in advance — in a one-story, three-unit building on Cliff House Drive overlooking the lake in May, and bought the AK-47-style rifle he used in the shooting from a gun dealer in Fallon, Nevada, about 60 miles away.
The FBI and local authorities raided the apartment Monday, finding items that could help solve the mystery about why Legan was here and what his ultimate intentions were.
They found ammunition boxes and spent shells from weapons other than the AK-47 Legan used in his deadly attack in Gilroy. There was a gas mask, a bullet proof vest and other items, but no weapons, according to the search warrant affidavit released by Mineral County officials.
County Sheriff Randy Adams and District Attorney Sean Lowe declined to discuss the seized items. In a statement, Adams wrote that Legan had no known interactions with law enforcement in Mineral County since he moved there, apparently in May.
Legan was also little known to neighbors in the desolate community with a high transient population.
“People come here and stay two or three months and they move on,” said Marty Neff, who lives just yards from what was Legan’s apartment.
“Sometimes he’d walk by and my dogs would bark at him and I tell them to shut up. But that was all I had to do with him,“ Neff said. “I guess I am a little surprised that the shooter lived here, but with all the hate in the world I probably shouldn’t be.”
Walker Lake, population 275, is made up of decaying buildings, a few modular homes and recreational vehicles. There are no stores, other than a closed shop where rocks were once sold. The highway is adorned with the occasional flattened rattlesnake and signs warning to watch for big horn sheep crossing the road. The place is but a blip on maps.
The town has a decaying pier that served boats when the lake was a trout fishing destination decades ago. But receding water levels in lake ended that and led to the area’s decline, Neff said. The large, lakefront restaurant closed, and the scant housing has been taken up by short term rentals to mine workers and civilian Army employees, he said, allowing Legan to come into town basically unnoticed..
“Until the lake comes back, not much is going to change,” Neff said. “This used to be a rocking place.”
Mineral County bills itself as “America’s Patriotic Home.” Hawthorne, the county seat about 10 miles south of Walker Lake, is home to a sprawling U.S. Army ammunition depot, and signs of the military’s influence are everywhere, from flags to a WW II tank parked just off Main Street near a large display of ordnance.
Another resident of the town out for a walk Tuesday, said he was glad Legan didn’t shoot anyone here. There are a lot of guns in the town, the man said, which worries him. He declined to give his name because he is a minority and said he “doesn’t fit in real good” with town’s conservative white population.
“All I can say is I’d rather be here (in Walker Lake) than there (Gilroy) because that’s where he shot people,” the man said.