Trauma of deadly VTA shooting remains
Nearly seven months after mass killings, survivors and victims’ families struggle with realities
Building B at the Guadalupe rail yard is a squat off-white facility sandwiched between rusty railroad tracks and Interstate 880. It sits on the western edge of the Valley Transit Authority’s light rail depot, a once-anonymous structure that on May 26 became the site of the Bay Area’s deadliest mass shooting.
“I have real problems even looking at that building,” said John Courtney, the transit union president who only now is making his first detailed public comments on the violence. He was there, in the break room when a VTA mechanic pulled a gun from a duffel bag and opened fire on his coworkers, and recalls yelling at the gunman to “stop f—ing shooting.”
Nearly seven months later, the building, which housed the Way Power and Signal Department, remains closed. There is no memorial, the windows are dark, and Courtney, a full-time union president, is forced to walk by the facility every week as he meets with VTA employees.
“To me, the entire building needs to be razed,” he said, as a low-slung gray cloud loomed over the rail yard. “They just need to destroy it.”
Much like Building B, the aftermath of the VTA shooting remains in suspended animation. After politicians gave their condolences and the media spotlight moved on, spouses, parents and children are confronting a slow-moving bureaucracy ill-equipped to handle a tragedy of this scale. They are finding little accountability as investigations drag on. Witnesses are left with nightmares.
On that early Wednesday morning, in the busy time between the night and the morning shifts, Samuel Cassidy killed nine men — six of them in the break room — before taking his own life. The victims — beyond their work keeping the trains that thousands depend on running every day — were fathers, brothers and husbands.
“It’s still fresh,” said Vicki Lane, whose husband, Lars Lane, was killed three days short of his 64th birthday. “When my family is here supporting me, I’m OK, but it’s when they leave I fall apart.” This year there was no Christmas tree or decorations in her San Jose home, which Lars lovingly remodeled. “We’re just letting the holiday kind of go,” she said.
It is still not clear what motivated Cassidy to kill his colleagues, but his long history of workplace confrontations has led families to ask why the VTA failed to step in. In January 2020, one VTA employee worried that Cassidy could “go postal” after he berated a female colleague over vacation scheduling. Nearly five years earlier, he was stopped at an airport with a memo book filled with notes about his hatred for the VTA, along with books about terrorism, although customs agents never alerted the VTA or local law enforcement.
Litigation is looming in the new year. At least seven of the victims’ families are planning a civil suit and VTA has hired an outside law firm to investigate the cause of the shooting, with findings expected early next year. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office is conducting a parallel investigation and declined to answer questions about the ongoing probe. Cassidy’s estate — including the San Jose home he owned and lit on fire the morning of the shooting — is still locked in probate court proceedings.
Meanwhile, many of the families have banded together in pushing the VTA to offer wives and children full pension benefits, even if their husbands had not worked the 10 years required to be completely vested.
Gloria Rudometkin, the widow of Michael Rudometkin, said the only communication she is receiving from the VTA is tersely worded letters announcing that no decision has been made on the fate of her husband’s pension benefits. “Like, I have to wait on VTA again?” she asked. “What does my future look like? It’s kind of in their hands.”
In a statement, the VTA said it is providing one year’s salary to victims’ families, along with workers’ compensation and life insurance benefits. The VTA, along with the Amalgamated Transit Union, which is negotiating the fate of the victims’ unvested pensions, declined to comment further on the matter.
The events of May 26 left a deeply traumatized workforce in its wake. To this day, 23 VTA staff members have yet to return to work. One man who witnessed the attack, Henry Gonzales, committed suicide in August.
The VTA has provided mental health counselors trained in trauma recovery and is opening a resource center. But for some, like Kirk Bertolet, the event has left recurring nightmares. He came upon six of his co-workers lying motionless in the silent break room.
“I heard about PTSD, but you don’t really understand it until you are in it,” Bertolet said. “Suddenly, I’m doing things and saying things that are totally out of character for who I was.”
He is on medical leave, living in Oklahoma, and carries a concealed weapon due to his trauma from the incident.
“I couldn’t go back,” he said. “Not to the building where I saw everybody die.”
When the shooting started, Courtney said he dove into a corner on top of another co-worker to protect her. Moments earlier Cassidy, standing in the doorway, had asked Courtney a question. The union was locked in a battle with VTA management over social distancing guidelines on buses, and Cassidy, speaking through a tightfitting mask that constricted his face, asked what the union was doing to ensure the 6-foot distancing mandate remained in place.
Courtney’s answer — that he was pushing back against management — seemed “acceptable” to Cassidy. “He kind of nodded his head, and that’s when I turned my head,” said Courtney. “And that’s when I heard the shooting start.”
Courtney huddled on the ground behind a plastic chair as the room filled with the sulfuric smell of bullets. He knew the flimsy chair wouldn’t protect him and decided he had to try something.
“So I stood up and I confronted him in a way and I said, ‘Stop f——g shooting,’ ” Courtney recounted. Cassidy was feet away “and he pointed the gun at me and said, ‘I’m not going to shoot you.’ And then he shot people around me.”
The union rep is not sure why he was spared, but his best guess is that he won Cassidy’s goodwill by defending him in disputes with VTA management — instances which he does not regret. Today he is still animated in his defense of Cassidy, calling management “bullies,” and denies any union responsibility in protecting “bad people.”
In 2019 Cassidy refused to sign his name to check out a two-way radio and Courtney intervened, ultimately signing out the radio for him.
“I really just wanted Sam to go off to work and management to be satisfied,” said Courtney, who accused VTA of “brow-beating” Cassidy. “If that’s overprotecting Sam, I don’t know what to tell you.”
On the surface, Courtney is still a gregarious union president with a salty beard gladhanding his “guys” — mechanics, station workers, rail and bus operators. But his outward demeanor belies difficulties he confronts returning to work. He spent 48 days at a facility in Florida that treats post-traumatic stress disorder and, with the help of counselors, returned to the room where he saw six colleagues die. He is still racked with survivor’s guilt, which has led him to double down on securing mental health resources for VTA employees.
“Coming back here was very difficult in the beginning,” said Courtney, shortly before he flashed a wide smile at a VTA worker waving his union badge. “I can be thousands of miles away from it and this situation will be in my brain.”