Victor Gomes bought a semi -automatic Gock 17 gun from a licensed weapons store in the city of Hanford in Central Valley in May 2017.
He used that gun to shoot his 10 -year -old son, Wyland, in his head. Then he committed suicide.
Gomes had approved the request for the background of the California Department of Justice for the purchase, despite a training order of domestic violence that forbade him to buy a firearm.
It seemed that the restriction order of the Superior Court of Kings County had not entered the state databases of the law that should have marked Gomes as a forbidden buyer. The delay allowed him to buy the homicidal weapon even thought that his previous threats to kill his son were well teaching in the judicial records.
Now, A proposal law By the Catherine Stefani Assembly, a San Francisco Democrat, aims to strengthen and accelerate the process by which the courts inform the state training orders to the State. It would require the Courts of the County to maintain records demonstrating that they submit the orders and make these records accessible in one day.
The objective, said Stefani, is to stop people subject to restrict the orders to buy weapons before the paperwork has presented, and allow families and victims to track the process.
The bill 1363 of the Assembly bears the name of Gomes’ son: Wyland’s law.
“Wyland’s Law Reures That Courts and the Department of Justice Maintain Clear, Trackable Records of Rest Training Orders, and That Families, Survivors and Law Enforcement Can Confirm Those Orders Were Properly Transmitted Citings Conference to Newsday Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration Duration DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION DURATION. “
She added: “It is unthinkable that someone subject to a reaction that rains the order of the order obtains access to a firearm due to a bureaucratic failure. Let me be absolutely clear: our laws are as strong as our systems to enforce it.”
Wyland’s mother, Christy Camara, said it is sad that it is a law on behalf of my son, I prefer that my son is here to have a law in his honor.
“But in the great scheme of things,” Camara said in an interview on Monday, “the reason we are doing all this is luckily, saving children and saving families the heart pain that I and my family have passed.”
In his garden at home, Christy Camara has a rock painted in honor of her 10 -year -old son, Wyland Gomes, whose father killed him in March 2020.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
After Wyland’s death in 2020, Camara was determined to find how the ex -husband was able to buy the weapon in California, a state with some of the most strict firearms of firearms in the nation.
She ran against A Byzantine system O Confidential databases and inconsistent data entry processes that left it with few intervals of why the restriction order was not enforced.
Your lawyer, Joseph M. Alioto Jr., A former Federal ProsecutorThe Superior Kings County Court said, “he never reported that rest training order to the Department of Justice.”
In an interview on Monday, he said or AB 1363: “It seems such an obvious law to ask the court to prove that he did what he is supposed to do.”
On May 18, 2017, Gomes bought the Kings Gun Center Gock pistol, a state license dealer in Hanford.
Todd Cotta, owner of the store, told the Times in 2023 that Pistol buyers must provide Photographic identification and residence test. Then, the store presents the excavation of information from the buyer of the State Justice Department, whose background verification performance.
The buyer must wait 10 days to collect the weapon, he even thought that the background verification “takes seconds,” said Cotta. An rest order for domestic violence was marked “if the judicial system put it,” he said.
For Gomes “Buy”, everything was made by state and federal law, “said Cotta.” It was approved by the California Department of Justice. “
Cotta said he had records that documented the sale, but that it was so standard that he does not remember it or Gomes.
Almost three years later, Wyland and Gomes were dead.
After a messy divorce, Gomes and Camara had bone inside and outside the court for years, fighting for Wyland’s custody.
Camara received a temporary resting order in 2016. At the request of the Court, he wrote that Gomes called at least two friends and said he wanted to commit suicide himself and the child while leaving his ex -wife alive so he could.
In March 2020, Gomes carried out the murder-suicide in his parents’ house in Hanford, where he had been living.
Only after she filed a record of records before the city of Hanford in 2021, Camara learned that she bought the homicide weapon, while the rest training order was supposed to be in force, a revelation that said “it was shocking.”
Wyland’s proposal law is sponsored by the Giffords Law Center to prevent armed violence, which was founded by former Arizona representative Gabrielle Giffords, who survived being head shot While greeting the components in 2011.
The bill would require that the County Courts verify that they submit training orders to the State Department of Justice, and that the Department of Justice, in the same way, maintains records that show their reception of those orders.
The bill “would require those records to be avoided for a petitioner, defendant or protected person, or its representative, within a business day after an oral request in written oral” and that it is accessible according to the State Public Registries Law.
After the murder-suicide, Camara submitted requests from public records before the Local and State Law Agencies and the Courts for Documents that show yes, and when, Gomes was listed a prohibited firearms holder in any accessible state.
He also requested records that show when, and for whom, a background verification was made before he obtained the weapon and other records that detail the purchase of weapons.
The California Department of Justice, which denied most of its applications, told the Times in 2023 that records the background verifications of individual firearms and the purchase of weapons, as well as the state information. Database used to track individual rest training orders – It cannot be revealed under the Law of Public Registries of the State.
Chamber of the Department of Justice and the Superior Court of Kings County.
In a judicial presentation of 2021 in response to the demand for camera, the lawyers of the Department of Justice said that some of the records can only be shared with prosecutors, police officers and other officials responsible for enforcing the law, and that dissemination of personal deprivation. “Woobd constitutes.”
Camara told The Times that he felt as if the State cares more about the privacy of a dead man than in the right of how he bought the weapon that killed his son.
Duration The press conference on Tuesday, Camara described his son as “fun, intelligent and educated”, with a “quiet and childish soul.”
“I can still listen to your laugh in my mind. I would give anything to listen to it once again,” he said. “From that horrible day, a question has persecuted me: how could this happen when there was a restriction order that would be supposed to protect us?”
