San Diego gunman was 'idolizing Nazis and mass shooters,' prompting gun removal from home in 2025
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Fifteen months before Caleb Liam Vazquez gunned down three men at the San Diego Islamic Center, Chula Vista police got a court order to remove his father’s numerous firearms.Vazquez, 18, was undergoing mental health treatment in the days before Monday’s deadly attack, having been previously involuntarily hospitalized by authorities.His parents, in the aftermath, said that he was caught up in a web of online hate, and the tragic events came after repeated voluntary trips to rehabilitation treatment centers.Vazquez came onto authorities’ radar in January 2025, when concerns about his mental health arose.
Chula Vista police filed a gun violence emergency protective order against his father, Marco Vazquez, with a police officer writing the teenager “was involved in suspicious behavior idolizing Nazis and mass shooters.” Police had acted after being alerted to the teenager’s writings on social media, using a 2014 law enacted after Elliot Rodger gunned down six people in Isla Vista, Calif.The law allows police, family and friends to get a judge to issue a gun violence restraining order to prevent an individual from getting access to firearms.
According to the San Diego Superior Court records, the officer noted that Caleb Vazquez “was placed on a 5150 hold” — where a person is deemed a danger to themselves or others and involuntarily detained for 72 hours — and that his father, who had 12 registered guns, refused to “allow officers to confirm if firearms were stored properly.”In a court declaration, Marco Vazquez acknowledged that he refused to let the officers, who were there to check on his son, into his home.But, he said, he told them the guns were locked in a safe and that his son didn’t have access to them.“I am well aware of the seriousness of the allegations made against my son,” Vazquez wrote in his court declaration.
“That is why my wife and I ...