Officials: Mass shooting suspect should have been on gun blacklist, but wasn’t
SACRAMENTO — The man accused of killing four people, including a 9year-old boy, at a Southern California business late last month should have been on a state list that bars dangerous people from owning and buying guns and ammunition.
Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez had a 2015 battery conviction that by state law should have barred him for 10 years from possessing or buying guns or ammo at retailers conducting background checks.
It’s unclear why Gonzalez, 44, wasn’t blacklisted or where and how he acquired the Glock semi-automatic handgun and ammunition used in the March 31 shooting in the city of Orange.
The shooting raises concerns over the state’s ability to enforce strict gun laws, and whether the California Department of Justice’s so-called “prohibited persons” system is effectively working to keep and, if necessary, seize firearms from risky people.
Two weeks after the mass shooting, police say Gonzalez wasn’t listed as a “prohibited person,” and they’re not yet sure how he got his Glock.
“Our detectives are still working on the trace for the weapon,” Orange Police Lt. Jennifer Amat said in an email this week.
Experts say Gonzalez could have bypassed the state’s background checks and acquired the weapon illegally.
The news that he had a recent conviction yet wasn’t on the state’s prohibited list to legally possess and buy firearms and ammunition at retailers alarmed the former assemblyman who authored a 2003 law that extended a gun ban for those convicted of certain crimes.
“He should not be able to purchase or have a firearm,” former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said. “If they didn’t have him on the list, it means that somebody didn’t do their job.”
Officials at the California Department of Justice, which manages the state’s background check system, declined to answer questions about why Gonzalez wasn’t on the list, saying the agency is forbidden by law from releasing information about a person’s criminal or firearms background-check history.
Police raced to the twostory office of Unified Homes, a mobile home brokerage company in the city of Orange, just after 5:30 p.m. on March 31. They said Gonzalez had locked the entrance gates with bike locks. Officers shot and wounded him when he fired at them with his handgun, police said.
Inside officers found four bodies, all members of a family that officers say Gonzalez knew. His alleged victims were Leticia Solis Guzman, 58, Jenevieve Raygoza, 28, Luis Tovar, 58, and 9 year-old Matthew Farias.
The third-grader died in the arms of his mother, Blanca Ismeralda Tamayo, who was shot once in the left arm and twice in the head, reportedly trying to shield the boy from the gunfire, according to the Orange County Register. She was in critical condition last week, and her family says in a GoFundMe online fundraiser for her medical bills that she continues to fight for her life.
Along with the handgun, police said Gonzalez carried handcuffs and pepper spray.
Gonzalez’s arraignment on murder charges has been repeatedly postponed because he remains hospitalized and unable to communicate with his courtappointed attorneys.
The shooting occurred nearly six years after Gonzalez was charged in Orange County Superior Court with child cruelty, assault with a deadly weapon, dissuading a witness from reporting a crime and battery.
In October of 2015, the court dismissed the more serious charges in exchange for Gonzalez pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery — one of nearly four dozen misdemeanor charges that in California come with a 10-year prohibition on firearm ownership.
He was fined $150 and sentenced to a day in jail. The day he was booked into jail after his arrest counted as “time served.”
At the time, the Orange County Superior Court notified the California Department of Justice of Gonzalez’s conviction, said court spokesman Kostas Kalaitzidis.
That should have landed Gonzalez on the prohibited list for the next 10 years.
Gonzalez in 2017 successfully petitioned the court to have his case expunged.
It’s highly unlikely Gonzalez’s expungement granted him access to firearms again, said Steve Lindley, a former California Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms chief who left in 2018.