California gunman reportedly locked gates of office complex before killing 4
ORANGE, Calif. — The gunman who killed four people, including a 9-yearold boy, at an office park in Orange locked the gates to the complex with bike cable locks and was armed with a weapon as well as pepper spray and handcuffs, police said Thursday.
Authorities said the shooting occurred inside a real estate and manufactured home business, Unified Homes, and the gunman and victims were connected through business and personal ties. Wednesday’s attack was not random, they said.
Officers received five calls about shots fired at the business in the 200 block of West Lincoln Avenue starting just after 5:30 p.m. The officers encountered gunfire when they arrived and opened fire, Orange Police Lt. Jennifer Amat said.
Because the gates were locked, officers fired through them and wounded the gunman, Amat said. Police had to use bolt cutters to enter the complex.
Officers found two victims in the courtyard, one of whom was the boy, and a woman who had also been shot and was taken to a hospital, where she remains in stable yet critical condition. The 9-year-old is believed to be the son of one of the victims who worked at the business.
Calling it a “horrific massacre,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Thursday it appeared that the boy died in the arms of a woman who “was trying to save him.”
Police at the scene found three more bodies, including that of one woman on an upstairs outdoor landing, one man inside an office and one woman inside a separate office.
Police recovered a semiautomatic handgun and a backpack with pepper spray, handcuffs and ammunition, “which we believe belonged to the suspect,” Amat said Thursday.
The victims’ names have not been released because their next of kin have not all been notified, she said. The suspect is Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, a 44-year-old Fullerton man who police said had a “business and personal relationship” with the victims.
The suspect had been living out of a motel room in nearby Anaheim, and arrived at the business in a rental car, police said. A photo released by authorities showed him entering the business dressed in black and gray with sunglasses, a baseball hat and a black bandanna covering his face. He had a backpack on his shoulder and a gun in his hand.
Spitzer also noted that the crimes were subject to the death penalty. He has not made a decision about whether to seek death in this case.
“It is a horrible, horrible tragedy,” Spitzer said, “that Mr. Gonzalez made a decision to use deadly force to deal with issues he was dealing with in his life. So he will suffer and face the consequences.”
Two police officers discharged their weapons at the scene, said Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s office, which investigates officerinvolved shootings.
Both were wearing body cameras.
The Orange Police Department is conducting the investigation into the suspect and victims, Edds said, and will forward their reports to the district attorney’s office.
The district attorney’s investigation into the shooting could take
“several months, up to a year,” she said. No officers were injured.
The Orange violence came a week after a gunman opened fire at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket and two weeks after a massacre at three Atlanta-area spas.
“How many more children have to die before our policymakers act?” asked James Densley, cofounder and co-president of the Violence Project, which monitors and studies mass violence.
During the pandemic, mass shootings decreased because many public spaces were closed, he said, but overall gun violence — which includes gang
all ages) related and organized crime shootings — went way up.
“2020 was the worst year on record for gun violence in a long time,” he said, noting that homicides peaked in the U.S. in the
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Friday 10am-12pm mid-1990s and reached a low around 2014. Since then, the numbers have climbed steadily, with the latest data pointing to a potential 25% increase between 2019 and 2020.
“We made almost 30 years of gains in reductions in homicides, and in a year, we’re now at a point where we’re looking right back where we were in the 1990s again,” he said. “It’s shocking. It’s infuriating, actually.”
The recent shootings have revived a nationwide conversation about gun violence. In the wake of last week’s shooting in Boulder, President Joe Biden made a plea for more gun control, calling on the Senate to pass two House-approved bills closing background check loopholes for gun buyers.
“This is not and should not be a partisan issue,” Biden said. “This is an American issue.”
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