The 44-year-old man suspected of killing four people, including a 9-year-old boy, in a shooting rampage inside an office complex in Orange is reportedly scheduled to be arraigned from his hospital room Friday.
The suspect, identified by police as Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, was shot by police in the courtyard of the building at 202 W. Lincoln Ave., according to Orange Police Department Lt. Jennifer Amat.
“Mr. Gonzalez is eligible for the death penalty,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said at a Thursday morning news conference. “This a special circumstances case. There were multiple victims.”
Meanwhile, the victims’ names were not released by authorities, but family members told ABC7 they were Luis Tovar, his daughter Genevieve Raygoza, Leticia Solis and 9-year-old Matthew Farias.
The boy’s mother, Ismeralda Tamayo, is believed to be the lone survivor of the shooting and was hospitalized in critical condition, ABC7 reported.
“It appears that a little boy died in his mother’s arms as she tried to save him during this horrific massacre,” Spitzer said.
A GoFundMe was set up to help the relatives of Matthew Farias pay for funeral costs. As of 5:30 a.m. Friday, $13,450 of the $25,000 goal had been raised.
Gonzalez was to be arraigned from his hospital room Friday, CBS2 reported.
The shooting took place at the business Tovar co-owned with his wife, Unified Homes, a real estate company selling manufactured homes.
The gunman was acquainted either personally or professionally with the victims, including the 9-year-old boy, and specifically targeted the real estate services company, police said Friday.
The first of multiple 911 calls came in seconds before 5:35 p.m., Amat said. The caller said a man was shooting into a business from across the street, she said. The first officers arrived on scene at 5:36 p.m.
Police were initially unable to enter due to bicycle cable locks that were used to secure the north and south gates of the courtyard from the inside, Amat said.
“We are … looking at if the locking of the gates constitutes ‘lying in wait,’ which would also be eligible for death,” Spitzer said.
Two officers spotted the suspect in the courtyard, and the shooting that left the suspect wounded happened through the gate before they were able to get inside, Amat said.
“It is our understanding the suspect was firing toward officers,” Amat said at an afternoon briefing.
A sergeant who responded to the scene had bolt cutters in the squad car that officers used to lop off the locks, she said.
Police were already in the area and were able to respond immediately to the 911 calls of shots fired, said incoming Police Chief Dan Adams, who will take over for Tom Kisela, who is retiring on July 3.
After officers gained access to the courtyard, they tended to the wounded suspect and a woman who had been shot, both of whom were hospitalized in critical but stable condition.
Officers then fanned out through the complex and found three more deceased victims, Amat said. One woman was found on an upstairs outdoor landing; one man was found inside an office building; and another woman was found inside a separate building.
Officers recovered a semi-automatic handgun inside the complex, along with a backpack containing pepper spray, handcuffs and ammunition believed to belong to the suspect, Amat said.
Gonzalez, whose last known address was in Fullerton, had recently been living out of a motel room in Anaheim, Amat said.
Other details on Gonzalez’s background were not provided, but Amat said the “preliminary motive is believed to be related to a business and personal relationship which existed between the suspect and all of the victims.”
“It appears all of the adults were connected through either a business or personal relationship, and this was not a random act of violence,” she said. “… To reiterate, this appears to be an isolated incident, and we believe everybody knew each other, whether through a business or personal relationship.”
Spitzer said the suspect “made the decision to use deadly force” to resolve dispute and “he will suffer and face the consequences.”
According to Orange County Superior Court records, the suspect, listed as Aminadab Gaxiola, was charged in April 2015 with misdemeanor counts of child abuse and endangerment, assault with a deadly weapon, dissuading a witness from reporting a crime and battery in a case in which he allegedly assaulted a boy in his care or custody with an umbrella on March 31, 2015, in Anaheim.
The child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon and dissuading a witness counts were dismissed on Nov. 30, 2015, and the battery charge was dismissed on Sept. 26, 2017, because of a law that allows for the expunging of convictions if a defendant clears probation successfully.
The shooting drew a heavy law enforcement presence with more than a dozen police cars and a SWAT vehicle at the building, including fire engines from multiple fire departments. The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also sent agents to the scene, as did the District Attorney’s Office.
Amat said the city had not seen such violence since 1997, when five people were killed and two others wounded when a state employee opened fire at the Caltrans facility near Batavia Street and Taft Avenue. Arturo Reyes Torres, 41, of Huntington Beach, was shot and killed by police a short distance away from the maintenance yard.
Kisela, who worked that case, said it was “just as horrific and challenging” whether the mass killing happened at the beginning of his tenure or when he was about to retire.
“It’s just a horrible, tragic event,” Kisela said. “Thank God, we don’t experience these types of incidents often.”
It was the country’s third mass-casualty shooting since March 16, when a gunman shot and killed eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at three spas in the Atlanta area. Six days later, a man shot and killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.