Fifteen months earlier than Caleb Liam Vazquez gunned down three males on the San Diego Islamic Heart, Chula Vista police received a courtroom order to take away his father’s quite a few firearms.
Vazquez, 18, was present process psychological well being therapy within the days earlier than Monday’s lethal assault, having been beforehand involuntarily hospitalized by authorities.
His dad and mom, within the aftermath, stated that he was caught up in an online of on-line hate, and the tragic occasions got here after repeated voluntary journeys to rehabilitation therapy facilities.
Vazquez got here onto authorities’ radar in January 2025, when issues about his psychological well being arose. Chula Vista police filed a gun violence emergency protecting order towards his father, Marco Vazquez, with a police officer writing {the teenager} “was concerned in suspicious habits idolizing Nazis and mass shooters.”
Police had acted after being alerted to {the teenager}’s writings on social media, utilizing a 2014 regulation enacted after Elliot Rodger gunned down six folks in Isla Vista, Calif. The regulation permits police, household and mates to get a choose to subject a gun violence restraining order to stop a person from gaining access to firearms.
In response to the San Diego Superior Court docket data, the officer famous that Caleb Vazquez “was positioned on a 5150 maintain” — the place an individual is deemed a hazard to themselves or others and involuntarily detained for 72 hours — and that his father, who had 12 registered weapons, refused to “permit officers to verify if firearms have been saved correctly.”
In a courtroom declaration, Marco Vazquez acknowledged that he refused to let the officers, who have been there to examine on his son, into his residence. However, he stated, he advised them the weapons have been locked in a secure and that his son didn’t have entry to them.
“I’m properly conscious of the seriousness of the allegations made towards my son,” Vazquez wrote in his courtroom declaration. “That’s the reason my spouse and I took the initiative to take away all firearms, ammunition and equipment from our residence and safe all sharp knives in our residence….”
He went on to say that after that day, he transferred his weapons (he listed 27 for himself and two for his spouse) to a federal firearms licensee in Nationwide Metropolis for storage and advised police the identical. Regardless of the switch, he wrote that he was served with the gun violence restraining order.
Marco Vazquez wrote in his declaration that he by no means threatened anybody or supported “any violent ideology corresponding to Nazism, racism, college shootings, or mass shootings.” He added that he and his spouse have been now monitoring their son’s on-line communications, have been working together with his college, and that their son recurrently attended remedy. The New York Occasions first reported a few of the particulars of the courtroom order on Thursday.
In response to a regulation enforcement supply, the FBI was alerted to Vazquez’s habits — one thing that occurs recurrently in 1000’s of such incidents nationwide. The FBI didn’t touch upon its data of Vazquez.
Chula Vista police didn’t return calls and messages looking for remark.
Caleb Vazquez, 18, together with Cain Clark, 17, drove to the mosque Monday morning with a plan for mass homicide. They have been briefly repelled by a safety guard, who, together with two different victims within the parking zone, alerted folks on the heart and police to the assault, saving lives. The attackers have been later discovered lifeless with self-inflicted wounds.
An lawyer for the Vazquez household stated they’re “deeply sorry for the ache and devastation prompted” and that their son’s actions “don’t replicate the values we raised our household with or the beliefs we maintain in our hearts.”
“Over the past a number of days, our household has been making an attempt to course of the horrific actions carried out by our son towards the Islamic Heart San Diego Neighborhood,” reads the assertion from lawyer Colin Rudolph.
“We need to start by acknowledging that nothing we are saying or do may ever restore the injury his actions have prompted. We’re fully heartbroken and devastated by what has occurred. We condemn these hateful and violent actions fully.”
The dad and mom stated, “Our son’s ideologies don’t align with our morals or rules as a household. Coming from a various household that not solely contains immigrants however Muslims as properly, we at all times taught the significance of acceptance, compassion, and love for each other.”
A Occasions investigation discovered each shooters had been radicalized by white nationalists’ on-line presence and assembly within the extremist on-line neighborhood. They left behind a 75-page doc that preached hate, anti-Islam ideology and antisemitism and promoted violence and chaos, regulation enforcement sources acquainted with the investigation advised The Occasions.
The Occasions has reviewed these writings, which espoused hate towards Muslims, Jews, Black folks, Latinos and the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. The Occasions additionally recognized social media accounts believed for use by one of many shooters who idolized college shootings, the white nationalism motion and neo-Nazi terrorism, and have been flush with memes from the net far-right extremist neighborhood.
Within the writings reviewed by The Occasions, Vazquez advocates for the destruction of the political system and “all-out race battle for the aim of societal collapse.”
Vazquez had beforehand attended Excessive Tech Excessive College, a Chula Vista Constitution College, which the college acknowledged to folks this week in a letter. The college didn’t return messages for remark.
Of their assertion, Vazquez’s dad and mom, revealed their son “was on the autism spectrum, and it’s painfully clear to us now that he struggled not solely with accepting elements of his personal id but in addition grew to resent them.”
“We imagine this, mixed with publicity to hateful rhetoric, extremist content material, and propaganda unfold throughout elements of the web, social media, and different on-line platforms, contributed to his descent into radicalized ideologies and violent beliefs. Whereas there is no such thing as a excuse for his actions, we have now come to acknowledge how harmful on-line areas are that normalize hatred.”
The household stated, “he voluntarily hung out in a number of rehabilitation facilities,” however in the end it was not sufficient. “We’ll ceaselessly reside with the burden of questioning whether or not there was extra we may have completed to assist stop this mindless tragedy.”
