Victor Gomes purchased the Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol in May 2017 from a licensed gun store in the central valley city of Hanford.
He shot his 10-year-old son Wyland in the head with the gun. Then he committed suicide.
Gomez has passed a background check with the California Department of Justice who purchased the purchase despite being subject to a domestic violence restriction order that prohibits him from purchasing a gun.
It seems that the Kings County Superior Court restriction order has not yet entered the state law enforcement database, which should mark Gomes as a prohibited buyer. The delay led him to purchase a murder weapon, even though his previous threat of killing his son was well documented in court records.
Now, Proposed law San Francisco Democrat Catherine Stefani aims to speed up and speed up the process of court reporting restrictions on orders to the state. This would require county courts to keep records to prove that they filed orders and accessed them within one day.
The goal is to stop people from limiting orders to be able to buy guns before submitting paperwork, and allow families and victims to track the process, Stefani said.
Assembly Act 1363 is named after Gomez’s son: Wyland’s Law.
“Wyland’s laws ensure that the courts and the Department of Justice maintain clear, traceable records of restrictive orders and that families, survivors and law enforcement can confirm that the orders have been properly spread,” Stefani said in a press conference outside San Francisco City Hall on Tuesday. “It’s about accountability, transparency and security.”
She added: “It is unthinkable to suffer a restrictive order to still have access to guns due to the failure of bureaucracy. Let me be absolutely clear: our laws are as powerful as our systems.”
Christy Camara, Wyland’s mother, said: “This is the law of my son’s name, because I would rather my son be here than obey the law.
“But in the grand scheme of things, the reason we do this is to hope to save the kids and save the heartache that families and families have experienced,” Kamala said in an interview on Monday.
Christy Camara has a rock in the garden at home in memory of her 10-year-old son Wyland Gomes, whose father killed him in March 2020.
(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)
After Wyland passed away in 2020, Camara was determined to find out how her ex-husband bought guns in California, the state that has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
She objected Byzantine System Confidential databases and inconsistent data entry process, which leaves her with few answers about the restriction order not executed.
Her attorney, Joseph M. Alioto Jr., Former federal prosecutor“The restriction order was never communicated to the Department of Justice,” the King County High Court said.
In an interview Monday, he talked about AB 1363: “It seems to be an obvious law to ask the court to prove that it can do what it should do.”
On May 18, 2017, Gomes purchased the Glock pistol from Kings Gun Center, a state-licensed gun dealer in Hanford.
Todd Cotta, owner of the store, told The Times in 2023 Pistol buyers must provide Photo recognition and residence certificate. The store then digitizes the buyer’s information to the state Department of Justice that performs background checks.
Even if the background check “takes a few seconds”, the buyer will have to wait 10 days before picking up the gun, Cotta said. “If the court system proposes a restrictive order, it marks the domestic violence order,” he said.
For Gomes’ purchase, “everything is done under state and federal laws,” Cotta said. “He got approval from the California Department of Justice.”
Kota said at the time that he had a record of selling, but it was so standard that he didn’t remember it or Gomez.
About three years later, Wyland and Gomes died.
After the divorce chaos, Gomez and Kamala have been in court for years, fighting Wyland’s custody.
Camara received a temporary restraining order in 2016. In a request to the court, Gomes called at least two friends and said he wanted to kill himself and the boy while keeping his ex-wife alive in order to “be hurt” for the rest of his life.
In March 2020, Gomes conducted a murder suicide at his parents’ home in Hanford.
It was only after filing a record request to the city of Hanford in 2021 that Kamara knew that he had purchased a murder weapon at the time of the restraining order, which would have been effective – she said was “shocking”.
The proposed Wyland law is by the Giffords Law Centre shot While greeting voters in 2011.
The bill would require county courts to verify that they filed restrictive orders with the state Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice, records show that they received the orders.
The bill would “requir that the records shall be provided within one working day to the petitioner, the defendant or his representative, and that the records may be accessed under the State’s Public Records Act, verbally or in writing”.
Following the murder suicide, Kamala filed a public record request to local and state law enforcement agencies and courts to show whether and when Gomes was listed as a prohibited gun owner in any accessible state access database.
She also asked records to show when and through whom the background check was conducted before getting the gun, and other records detail the purchase of the gun.
The California Department of Justice denied most of her requests, and he told the Times in 2023 that records records about personal gun background checks and gun purchases — as well as information from the state Databases are used to track individual limit order – Cannot be disclosed under the state’s Public Records Act.
Kamala sued the Justice Department and the King County High Court.
In a 2021 application for Camara lawsuit, the Justice Department attorney said some of the records can only be shared with prosecutors, police officers and other law enforcement officers, and that disclosure of other records “will constitute an invasion of personal privacy.”
Camara told Times that she felt the state seemed to care more about the privacy of the deceased than about her right to know how he bought the gun that killed his son.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Camara described her son as “interesting, smart and polite.”
“I can still hear his laughter,” she said. “Since that bad day, a question haunted me: How could this happen when there is a restriction order that should protect us?” ”
