ORANGE, Calif. — A man was charged Friday with murder and attempted murder in a shooting rampage at a Southern California office building that left four people dead, including a 9-year-old boy.
Orange County prosecutors said Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, 44, was charged with the attempted murder of two police officers after firing at them when they reached the scene of the shooting late Wednesday and the attempted murder of a woman who was wounded but survived. Authorities said Gaxiola had chained the gates to the business complex closed with bicycle cable-type locks before the attack.
“The taking of the life of another human being is the most serious of crimes and the slaughter of multiple people while they were essentially locked in a shooting gallery is nothing short of terrifying,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement.
Gaxiola was expected to be arraigned Friday from the hospital, where he was in critical but stable condition. He was shot during the onslaught and authorities are investigating whether he was hit by police or self-inflicted gunfire.
It was not immediately known who his attorney would be.
Authorities identified the people killed in the attack on the office of Unified Homes, a mobile home brokerage business, as Luis Tovar, 50; Leticia Solis Guzman, 58; Jenevieve Raygoza, 28; and Matthew Farias, 9. They said the suspect and adult victims had business and personal relationships with each other, and the shooting was not a random act of violence.
But Matthew, a third grader from the nearby city of Santa Ana, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, said Zef Farias, the boy’s uncle. Usually, the humble boy who loved bike riding and his dog went to day care, and Farias said he didn’t know why he was at the office with his mother, Blanca Tamayo, who works for Unified Homes and was the attack’s wounded survivor. She remains hospitalized, Farias said.