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 took the initiative to remove all firearms, ammunition and accessories from our home and secure all sharp knives in our home….”
He went on to say that after that day, he transferred his guns (he listed 27 for himself and two for his wife) to a federal firearms licensee in National City for storage and told police the same. Despite the transfer, he wrote that he was served with the gun violence restraining order.
Marco Vazquez wrote in his declaration that he never threatened anyone or supported “any violent ideology such as Nazism, racism, school shootings, or mass shootings.” He added that he and his wife were now monitoring their son’s online communications, were working with his school, and that their son regularly attended therapy. The New York Times first reported some of the details of the court order on Thursday.
According to a law enforcement source, the FBI was alerted to Vazquez’s behavior — something that happens regularly in thousands of such incidents nationwide. The FBI did not comment on its knowledge of Vazquez.
Chula Vista police did not return calls and messages seeking comment.
Caleb Vazquez, 18, along with Cain Clark, 17, drove to the mosque Monday morning with a plan for mass murder. They were briefly repelled by a security guard, who, along with two other victims in the parking lot, alerted people at the center and police to the attack, saving lives. The attackers were later found dead with self-inflicted wounds.
An attorney for the Vazquez family said they are “deeply sorry for the pain and devastation caused” and that their son’s actions “do not reflect the values we raised our family with or the beliefs we hold in our hearts.”
“Over the last several days, our family has been trying to process the horrific actions carried out by our son against the Islamic Center San Diego Community,” reads the statement from attorney Colin Rudolph.
“We want to begin by acknowledging that nothing we say or do could ever repair the damage his actions have caused. We are completely heartbroken and devastated by what has happened. We condemn these hateful and violent actions entirely.”
The parents said, “Our son’s ideologies do not align with our morals or principles as a family. Coming from a diverse family that not only includes immigrants but Muslims as well, we always taught the importance of acceptance, compassion, and love for one another.”
A Times investigation found both shooters had been radicalized by white nationalists’ online presence and meeting in the extremist online community. They left behind a 75-page document that preached hate, anti-Islam ideology and antisemitism and promoted violence and chaos, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation told The Times.
The Times has reviewed those writings, which espoused hate toward Muslims, Jews, Black people, Latinos and the LGBTQ+ community. The Times also identified social media accounts believed to be used by one of the shooters who idolized school shootings, the white nationalism movement and neo-Nazi terrorism, and were flush with memes from the online far-right extremist community.
In the writings reviewed by The Times, Vazquez advocates for the destruction of the political system and “all-out race war for the purpose of societal collapse.”
Vazquez had previously attended High Tech High School, a Chula Vista Charter School, which the school acknowledged to parents this week in a letter. The school did not return messages for comment.
In their statement, Vazquez’s parents, revealed their son “was on the autism spectrum, and it is painfully clear to us now that he struggled not only with accepting parts of his own identity but also grew to resent them.”
“We believe this, combined with exposure to hateful rhetoric, extremist content, and propaganda spread across parts of the internet, social media, and other online platforms, contributed to his descent into radicalized ideologies and violent beliefs. While there is no excuse for his actions, we have come to recognize how dangerous online spaces are that normalize hatred.”
The family said, “he voluntarily spent time in multiple rehabilitation centers,” but ultimately it was not enough. “We will forever live with the burden of wondering whether there was more we could have done to help prevent this senseless tragedy.”
