Police seized guns from home of mosque shooter after alarming behavior in 2025

SAN DIEGO — More than a year before Caleb Vazquez and a friend attacked a mosque in San Diego and killed three people, the police were so alarmed by Vazquez’s behavior that they secured a court order to confiscate his father’s guns.

“Child was involved in suspicious behavior idolizing nazis and mass shooters,” a police officer wrote in a January 2025 protective order.

Vazquez, who was 18 when he was found dead Monday shortly after the police say he and a friend attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego, had at some point been placed in an involuntary psychiatric hold, according to court documents.

The court papers show that Vazquez had been on the authorities’ radar long before the shooting at the mosque. They also raise questions about why authorities, knowing what they knew, were unable to prevent the massacre.

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The California Legislature in 2014 allowed the family and friends of people who might be violent, as well as the police and other parties, to seek a court order to temporarily confiscate weapons through measures known as gun violence restraining orders. The law was a response to a mass shooting that year near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The order to take guns from the Vazquez household was filed against Vazquez’s father, Marco Vazquez, who the police said in the court documents had 12 guns registered to him. The order was filed by the police department in Chula Vista, California, a San Diego suburb where the Vazquezes live. The police said in the court filing that Marco Vazquez “would not allow officers to confirm if firearms were stored properly.”

The San Diego police and the FBI said that Caleb Vazquez and Cain Clark, 17, attacked the mosque and then took their own lives minutes later. They were found dead of gunshot wounds in a white BMW a few blocks from the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in San Diego County.

In a court affidavit last year, Marco Vazquez said that he was “well aware of the seriousness of the allegations made against my son.” He wrote that before the order requiring him to turn over his weapons, he voluntarily put them in a storage facility because of concerns about his son. He said that he and his wife had also secured all sharp knives.

Vazquez also said that they had increased their supervision of their son and put him in therapy.

“Presently, our son spends his time with his parents, grandparents, brother and a small group of friends that my wife and I approve of,” he wrote. “Again, these activities are all supervised.”

He said at the time that he had no intention of bringing his weapons back to the home “until my wife, my son’s therapist and I believe it is safe to do so.”