Radicalization concerns, seized guns and 911 calls: San Diego shooting prompts questions about parental awareness, gun access

By Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — The mother’s calls to police Monday morning painted an alarming picture: Her 17-year-old son was missing, along with several of her weapons and his car.

The boy had left a possible suicide note before vanishing with a man he met online whom she had never seen before – both dressed in camouflage, she told police.

Police were still searching for the woman’s son two hours later when they received reports of an active shooter at the city’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of San Diego, and found the bodies of three men killed in an attack: Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad.

Just a few blocks away, her son Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Vazquez, were found dead inside a car with self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. The two teenagers would later be identified by officials as the shooters who carried out the attack.

Vazquez was already known to police. Last year, law enforcement filed a gun violence emergency protective order, after he was placed on a psychiatric hold, to seize firearms in his parents’ home amid concerns about the teenager’s “suspicious behavior idolizing Nazis and mass shooters,” court documents show.

He had been in a mental health program up until the day before the shooting, a federal law enforcement official told CNN. The reasons for Vazquez’s release from the mental health facility that day were not disclosed, and the facility declined to provide any details to CNN due to the ongoing investigation and medical privacy laws.

While Clark had not been on law enforcement radar, the firearms used in the attack were taken from Clark’s family home, a law enforcement official close to the investigation said.

Authorities are “still looking into” whether they will recommend charges against Clark’s parents, and it’s unclear how the shooters obtained the weapons, the police chief said Tuesday.

Police have not provided any information on whether Clark’s parents told law enforcement how the firearms were stored, nor have they answered questions about how the guns were accessed.

The case raises serious questions about what, if any, warning signs might have been missed by those closest to the shooters in the days leading up to the attack and highlights how even when red flags are reported by parents and law enforcement – such as in Vazquez’s case – there are challenges in ensuring the child won’t commit a future act of violence, according to gun violence and legal experts CNN spoke with.

There is greater potential parental liability for Clark – who was a minor at the time of the attack – but it will ultimately depend on their prior knowledge of his risk, what steps were or were not taken and whether firearms were secured, according to the experts.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office declined to share any information regarding potential charges due to the ongoing investigation. San Diego police also declined to comment, citing a “very extensive and sensitive investigation.”

It would not be unprecedented for a parent to be alleged to be legally responsible for a shooting their child carried out. There have been two notable cases in the past two years in which the parents were convicted: the first involving the parents of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley, the second, the parents of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray.

Police previously ordered shooter’s parents to surrender guns

Vazquez’s parents said hateful rhetoric online contributed to their son’s “descent into radicalized ideologies and violent beliefs, adding “We reject hatred, extremism, bigotry, and violence in every form.”

“Although measures were taken to help him through his mental instability, it ultimately was not enough,” Vazquez’s parents said in a statement. “We repeatedly encouraged him to seek help, and he voluntarily spent time in multiple rehabilitation centers.”

The family added: “We will forever live with the burden of wondering whether there was more we could have done to help prevent this senseless tragedy.”

Warning signs about Vazquez’s apparent neo-Nazi ideologies were cited in the protective order issued in January last year ordering his father to surrender multiple registered firearms, according to the document, which says the teen had been placed under a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold.

At the time, Vazquez’s father told the court in a written declaration that he and his wife had already voluntarily removed around two dozen firearms from their home before he was served with a gun violence restraining order. He said the firearms had been “locked in safe inside a locked closet in my house” and “no one, including my son Caleb, had any access to the firearms.”

The father also described monitoring his son’s social media presence following an “incident,” staying home for work to supervise him and making sure he was seeing his therapist.

Once Vazquez became an adult, however, there were limited tools available to the parents and authorities to continue monitoring him due to “civil liberties and due process concerns,” according to Josh Campbell, CNN Senior Correspondent and former FBI Special Agent.

“Unless he continued to present a potential threat, there would have been no real mechanism to force confinement or treatment, and around-the-clock monitoring by the police is neither realistic nor likely even lawful,” he added.

‘No clear pathway’ to prevent violence after warning signs

The FBI and local police have said Clark and Vazquez met online and “exchanged radicalized ideology,” leaving behind a lengthy document citing racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic ideology.

A live video of the shooting the teenagers shared shows Nazi and White supremacist imagery on their weapons and clothing as they fired into the mosque. The pair intended to hit additional targets the day of the mosque shooting but may have stopped because one of them was wounded by an armed security officer at the mosque, federal law enforcement officials told CNN.

When officers arrived at Clark’s home, they found he and Vazquez “had possibly written a suicide pact,” police said Friday.

How much the parents may have known about the shooters’ ideologies and plans to commit violence will likely come under the microscope as investigators dig into the teenagers’ backgrounds and online activity.

The Vazquez parents may not face the same potential legal liability as Clark’s given their son is an adult, they turned over their firearms and took steps to try and address his mental health issues, experts said.

In Clark’s case, it’s still unclear whether he displayed any warning signs before the attack and if his family may have known of them.

CNN is working to get in touch with Clark’s parents for comment. His grandparents told CNN after the shooting they were still “trying to process this,” and said they were “very sorry for what happened.”

Even when the parents are aware of their child’s mental health issues and threats of violence, there is “no clear pathway that can ensure a child will not act out,” said Shirin Bakhshay, assistant professor at UCLA School of Law.

While research shows acts of gun violence typically involve perpetrators who have often exhibited warning signs beforehand, there is no “evidence-based way” to prevent these tragedies from occurring, according to Bakhshay. But anecdotal research does indicate children need multiple forms of intervention over a long period of time, involving parents, teachers, counselors, coaches and mental health providers, she said.

“There is no one intervention point. This is part of what makes addressing this crisis so challenging,” Bakhshay said.

What Vazquez’s case exposes is a “true gray area for public safety,” according to Campbell. It can be particularly difficult for law enforcement to prevent an act of violence by those who haven’t telegraphed their plans to others, he said.

In many cases, violence prevention doesn’t come down to just enforcing the law, but family and friends recognizing red flags and making an effort to intervene and assist their loved one in seeking help, Campbell said.

If parents show negligence in safely storing their firearms when they are aware of their child’s concerning behavior and their child accesses those weapons to carry out violence, “we move beyond mere hopeful intervention and directly into potential criminal liability,” Campbell said.

Calls from shooter’s mother may be ‘double-edged’

The number of weapons Clark’s mother reported missing the morning of the attack triggered a “larger threat assessment picture,” the police chief said, and fueled a race to find the boy using license plate readers as officers dispatched to a school associated with one of the shooters.

The calls from the mother may be “double-edged” because, on one hand, it shows she took the situation seriously and tried to act, said Nila Bala, UC Davis acting law professor.

On the other hand, Bala argues if the investigation reveals the mother previously knew her son posed a danger to himself or others and didn’t secure the weapons, prosecutors could potentially consider charges for involuntary manslaughter or child endangerment.

After the attack, law enforcement seized more than 30 guns, including numerous pistols, rifles and shotguns, as well as a crossbow, while executing three search warrants at residences associated with the shooters, said Mark Remily, the special agent in charge of FBI San Diego. Tactical gear, ammunition, and electronics were also seized, he added.

If there are charges, how many firearms were found at the home would not play into the severity of legal consequences the parents might face – only whether, and how, they were secured, according to Kelly Roskam, director of law and policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

California has some of the strongest secure storage and child access prevention laws in the nation and legal consequences escalate if a child carries a weapon off-premises and causes great bodily injury or death, according to gun policy experts.

During the course of the investigation, police will likely ask the parents to show that all of the weapons were securely stored, consistent with the secure storage legal requirement, said Roskam. “Even if there was one that they were not securely storing, if that’s how they were accessed, that would play a factor in whether charges were brought or not.”

Ultimately, if the parents can demonstrate compliance with California secure storage and child access prevention laws, criminal liability “becomes much harder to establish,” Bala said.

“The question might then shift to whether the secure storage was truly secure, or whether there were known vulnerabilities,” she added.

State prosecutors have said they are involved in the investigation. Their early involvement can signal they are looking into what charges might be brought and at what level, but also could reflect the complexity of the case and the fact it’s being treated as a hate crime with extremist speech involved, Bala said.

Earlier cases set a precedent

The emerging trend of prosecuting parents for their children’s crimes represents a “new frontier” that goes beyond regulating parents’ behavior or serving as after-the-fact gun control, according to Bakhshay.

Prosecutors are using criminal law to “respond to regulatory and institutional failures and essentially say that parents are going to be on the hook for what their kids do,” Bakhshay said.

Parental liability laws have existed for over a century, but what’s changed with the cases against the parents of Crumbley and Gray is “prosecutorial willingness to use general criminal law” such as involuntary manslaughter and criminal negligence rather than parental-specific statutes to hold them accountable, according to Bala.

James Crumbley and Jennifer Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter after their then-15-year-old son killed four students at his Michigan high school in 2021. That case set the stage for the case against Colin Gray, who was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges this year after his son killed two students, two adults and injured nine others.

Before the Crumbley case, prosecutors assumed juries wouldn’t hold parents responsible for their children’s criminal acts, said Bala. But their conviction “created a proof of concept,” which directly led to the Gray case, she added.

In both the Crumbley and Gray cases, criminal liability was particularly strong because both parents were confronted by a third party about their child’s risk of future violence and failed to take the right precautions, according to Dyllan Moreno Taxman, assistant professor at Baylor University School of Law.

Prosecutors and gun control advocates have pointed to the “potential deterrent benefit of prosecuting the parents of mass shooters,” believing it will cause other parents to “think more carefully about providing children exhibiting violent ideations access to a firearm,” Taxman said.

The parents in both the Crumbley and Gray cases purchased guns for their teenage sons as Christmas gifts, and the guns were left unsecured.

Gun storage will likely be at the heart of any potential case in San Diego.

About 6.7 million minors nationwide live in homes with at least one loaded and unlocked firearm and between 70% and 90% of guns used in youth suicides, unintentional shootings and school shootings by minors are obtained from their homes or homes of relatives or friends, according to Giffords, an advocacy and research organization focused on gun violence prevention.

California recently strengthened its safe storage law, which went into effect this year, requiring gun owners to securely store their firearms at all times in a residence when not in use. The state’s child access prevention and secure storage laws are considered the “gold standard,” according to Roskam.

Prosecutors may now have a particular interest “in ensuring consistent application of recently strengthened gun safety laws,” she said. Charges can elevate to a first-degree felony if parents don’t safely secure firearms, which the minor then obtains and uses to cause death or great bodily injury, which is punishable by up to three years, Bala said.

Red flag laws, parental reporting and law enforcement intervention are “excellent measures” for preventing gun violence, Taxman said. But even in states like California, which has regulations in place to prevent attacks like the San Diego mosque shooting, they “may continue to recur,” said Taxman.

And when those tragedies happen, he said, parents will be scrutinized.

“There is, perhaps, a feeling that the devaluation of life from the mass shooting event is so severe that greater responsibility is necessary,” Taxman said. In situations where parents “have a responsible role in the tragedy, they are prime candidates to pay the outstanding social debt their child’s behavior has created.”

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CNN’s John Miller, Celina Tebor and Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.