Victims identified in mass killing at Southern California business, suspect charged with 4 counts of murder
Four victims who were locked in a Southern California office building before a gunman opened fire were identified Friday, shortly after the suspect was charged with multiple counts of murder.
The Orange Police Department identified the victims as Genevieve Raygoza, 28, Luis Tovar, 50, Leticia Solis Guzman, 58, and 9-year-old Matthew Farias, who officials said was found dead in the arms of a woman believed to be his mother. The woman, who hasn't been identified, was in the hospital in critical but stable condition as of Friday morning.
The names of those killed were released after the man accused of targeting and killing them was charged with an array of crimes, including four counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, 44, was set to be arraigned Friday afternoon from his hospital bed. He was shot during the attack, though authorities were unsure whether his wounds were self-inflicted or from police during a shootout.
Police said Gonzalez knew his victims through business and personal relationships. Authorities said he locked gated entryways into an office suite that houses Unified Homes, a mobile-home broker, in Orange, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, before opening fire.
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It was the nation's third high-profile mass shooting in less than three weeks. The four victims were killed just a week after a gunman in Boulder, Colorado, killed 10 people at a supermarket. The week before that, a gunman in the Atlanta area killed eight people, most of them women of Asian descent, at three spas.
Family of those killed in the attacks were reeling from the losses.
Luis Tovar, one of the victims in the attack, owned Unified Homes, the mobile home brokerage company police say the suspect targeted.
“Our world is shattered,” 28-year-old Vania Tovar, one of Tovar’s five children, told the Orange County Register.
His daughter, Raygoza, was also killed.
Her husband, Armando Raygoza, wrote on a GoFundMe page she was "an amazing mother, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, and loving friend" and had "a smile that could light up any room and a caring nature of putting other’s needs before hers."
Family members posted a GoFundMe page hoping to raise money for Farias, the 9-year-old boy who was killed. A photo of the boy shows him in a collared shirt smiling in front of a tree decorated for Easter.
'Horrific massacre': Suspect locked entries, knew victims in deadly shooting at California office building, police say
The Orange Police Department started getting calls about a shooting around 5:30 p.m. local time Wednesday. Within two minutes, officers were on scene but discovered both entrances to a gated courtyard for the building had been locked with a bicycle cable lock, Lt. Jen Amat said.
"It appears all of the adults were connected either by business or a personal relationships," Amat said Thursday. "This was not a random act of violence."
Gonzalez was charged in 2015 in Orange County with cruelty to a child and other counts. It’s not clear if the child was his. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and served one day in jail. All other counts were dismissed, and the conviction was expunged in 2017, said Lauren Gold, spokeswoman for the city of Anaheim.
Contributing: Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Orange, California, shooting suspect charged with murder; victims ID'd
