“It’s just very difficult for everyone to be able try to wrap their heads around and understand what has happened,” Mr Hendricks said.
Two patients were transported to Santa Clara Valley Medical Centre, according to spokesperson Joy Alexiou. One person was pronounced dead upon arrival, and the other was in critical condition.
At the scene, Michael Hawkins said he was waiting for his mother Rochelle who had called him from a colleague’s phone to assure him she was safe.
When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her co-workers” and dropped her mobile, Mr Hawkins added.
Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.
Santa Clara is the largest county in California’s Bay Area and is home to Silicon Valley - a hub for tech start-ups.
A distraught woman leaves the scene in San Jose
AP
Adobe, PayPal and eBay are all based in the city of about one million residents, which is located about 50 miles southeast of San Francisco.
Across the US, there have been 230 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years.
A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a tweet that his office was “in close contact with local law enforcement and monitoring this situation closely.”
Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to the crime scene, officials said.
