Authorities in the Californian city of Orange (USA) identified Aminadab Gaxiola González on Thursday as the suspect in the shooting that left four dead on Wednesday, including a 9-year-old boy.
Authorities indicated in a press conference that the 44-year-old Hispanic apparently knew the victims, including the child’s mother, who was injured in the shooting and is in critical condition, according to local media.
Lt. Jennifer Amat, spokeswoman for the Orange Police Department, explained that Gaxiola González allegedly closed off access to a building that houses several offices and small local businesses with some kind of chains.
The officers who responded to the emergency call managed to open the access doors and found the suspect, who apparently was injured in the exchange of fire with the police and is in a hospital with considerable but stable injuries.
In one of the corridors of the building, the uniformed men found the 9-year-old boy, already deceased, and his mother, who was injured and was taken to a nearby hospital.
On the second floor, agents found two women and a man dead inside the offices of the Unified Home company, a business specializing in the sale of mobile homes.
Amat clarified that the causes that would have led the suspect to shoot the victims are still being investigated.
However, he clarified that apparently Gaxiola González knew his victims and that this was not “a random shooting.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer indicated that, if found guilty, the suspect could be “eligible” to receive a death sentence.
The prosecutor highlighted the brutality of the crime scene, adding that the child is believed to have died in the mother’s arms.
The authorities did not release the names of the victims, because they have not yet finished communicating it to the next of kin.
Police found at the scene a backpack with handcuffs, ammunition and pepper spray, believed to belong to the suspect.
Amat did not want to share with the media what kind of weapon was used by the suspect, who was shot in the head and another in the hand.
The injuries are believed to be the result of shots fired by responding officers during an exchange with the alleged killer.
This attack in the Los Angeles metropolitan area comes just a week after a gunman murdered 10 people in a Colorado supermarket in the largest incident of its kind in two years.
A week earlier, another gunman attacked three Asian massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people, six of them Asian women.
Orange Police said Wednesday was the deadliest shooting in that city since 1997.
In December of that year, a former Caltrans employee who had been laid off killed four of his former co-workers and was later shot dead by police.