2021 San Jose shooting

On the morning of May 26, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's (VTA) Guadalupe Division rail yard in San Jose, California. Samuel James Cassidy, a 57-year-old VTA employee, shot and killed nine coworkers before fatally shooting himself. All ten men who died, including Cassidy, were VTA employees; the nine victims ranged in age from 29 to 63 and were all killed by multiple gunshot wounds, ruled homicides by autopsy.

Before the shooting, Cassidy set fire to his own home in South San Jose, having placed ammunition and accelerants near a lit stove; no one was inside. He then drove to the VTA facility and opened fire in a conference room in Building B during a power crew meeting, sparing the local transit union president who was present, before moving to Building A and continuing to shoot. Witnesses and police said he appeared to target some individuals while sparing others. Responding sheriff's deputies and police arrived within minutes of the first 911 calls; Cassidy killed himself on the third floor of Building A as officers closed in, roughly ten minutes after the shooting began. He had fired 39 rounds from three legally obtained semiautomatic handguns and was carrying 32 high-capacity magazines. A subsequent search of his home found 12 firearms, 25,000 rounds of ammunition, and a dozen Molotov cocktails.

Cassidy had worked at VTA since 2001. His ex-wife described him as having long-standing anger toward coworkers and the agency, and said he had spoken of workplace violence more than a decade earlier. VTA records showed a pattern of insubordination and verbal altercations, though he was never formally disciplined. In 2016, he had been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after returning from the Philippines, when agents found writings expressing hatred toward VTA and conducted questioning focused partly on suspected sex tourism; the detention did not lead to arrest, and local law enforcement was not informed of it. A district attorney later said this information, had it been shared, could have supported a gun violence restraining order.

In the aftermath, VTA light rail service was suspended for months and gradually restored between August and September 2021. The City of San Jose announced a package of gun-violence policy proposals, including a first-in-the-nation gun liability insurance and fee requirement, which the City Council passed in January 2022 and which was subsequently challenged in litigation by gun-rights groups. Memorials were held, including a permanent installation unveiled on the shooting's first anniversary. In May 2022, victims' families filed wrongful death lawsuits against VTA, Santa Clara County, and security contractors; by November 2022 eight families reached an $8 million settlement, while the family of one victim continued litigation as of mid-2025. A railyard employee who witnessed the shooting died by suicide in August 2021 on his first day back at work.