Louis Tovar has barely had time to grieve the deaths of his father, sister and 9-year-old brother – all killed in a shooting rampage in Orange.
For now, he’s focusing on his mother, Blanca Ismeralda Tamayo.
Details that he’s heard about the March 31 shooting offer little comfort. Tamayo was shot three times while trying to flee with her youngest son as a gunman, using a Glock semi-automatic handgun, fired. She survived, but her boy died in her arms, reportedly as she tried to shield him.
Tamayo’s condition is critical. One bullet struck her left arm. Two bullets remain lodged in her head.
“She’s fighting,” said Tovar, 25.
“It’s a miracle at this point. I’m just hanging in here, day by day, hoping for my mom’s recovery.”
Tovar said he’s processing the loss in phases, and he’s far from done.
“I didn’t mourn for my dad for the first three or four days. And then, all together, it hit me.
“And Matthew… I loved him so much. I would be talking to my mom, and I would hear him in the background – ‘Is that Louis? Is that Louis? I love you, brother!’” Tovar recalls his little brother yelling for him to hear.
“I’ve lost my father. I lost my sister. I lost my little brother. It’s hard for me to focus my energy on anybody individually. I can’t mourn just for my father, mourn just for my sister, mourn just for my little brother.
“My focus is directed toward my mom because she’s here,” he added.
“The one person I have left is my mom. And I need her alive.”
The shooting
The first 911 call came at 5:34 p.m. on March 31; a man was shooting into a two-story business building at 202 W. Lincoln Avenue in Orange. Police drove to the scene within two minutes, but they found bicycle locks on the entrance gates. They then engaged in a gunfight with the suspect, shooting and wounding him in the process. Police said later that in addition to the handgun the suspect was armed with ammunition, pepper spray and handcuffs.
While Tamayo was critically wounded, four others were killed. All, like Tamayo, were connected to the real estate business called Unified Homes.
One victim was Tamayo’s former domestic partner, Luis Tovar, 50, owner of the 15-year-old company. He ran the operation with his wife, Karla Maria Tovar – who was not at the scene – and other members of their close-knit family.
Another was Tamayo and Tovar Sr.’s daughter, Jenevieve Raygoza, 28, of Fullerton. Tovar said his sister, Raygoza – described by her husband as a loving, detailed-oriented mother to their two young boys –- was “a leader in the family,” on business and social fronts.
Also killed was Leticia Solis Guzman, known as Letty. The 58-year-old real estate agent is survived by her four adult children, ages 20 to 24, who describe their mother as a hard-working optimist who loved them unconditionally and was dedicated to the company she’d worked at since its founding in 2006.
The youngest victim was Matthew Farias, a third-grader at Hoover Elementary in Santa Ana. His father, Rafael Farias, described the smart, athletic boy as “my angel.”
Tovar believes that his mother and Matthew ran from the second-story office to get away, but were trapped by the locked gates.
“They found my mom (with Matthew) next to the gate. They were trying to escape.”
“I know my mom. She’s very clever. I assume she ran out with my little brother.”
Confusion; silence
Tovar said he first got a hint of bad news when an uncle from Mexico called him at 8:30 p.m, trying to ask him about a shooting in Orange. But Tovar said his phone kept breaking up. “I thought something happened in Mexico.”
Minutes later, Tovar got a call from an American cousin, Alex, who said: “Dude, there was a shooting in Orange.”
Then news started trickling out about the location, which Tovar knew as home to his father’s mobile home real estate business, and that the shooting involved a child. By 9 p.m. Tovar was at the police station.
Family members from the large clan – more than 20 – gathered at the police station in Orange but were soon redirected to a local community center.
“The only people there were my family,” Tovar said. “Minus my sister, my dad, Matthew, my mom.”
That’s where they waited – without confirmation of what had happened and who they had lost – until almost 1 a.m.
“We all went home for the night. They couldn’t tell us anything.”
Still, Tovar had hope. Maybe, he thought, his missing relatives were being held by police until all the pieces of the shooting could be confirmed.
But when morning came, and they gathered at his father’s house, there was more news:
Four people were dead, a man, two women and a child.
“It was a 9-year-old boy. And I knew right away it was my little brother…It was pretty surreal.”
“That’s when we all knew and all broke down.”
Still, it was unclear who survived.
“Everybody thought the person alive was my sister, Jenevieve,” Tovar said. “Everyone was telling me my mom was dead.”
The family rushed between Tovar’s home, the police station and the hospital.
“Armando, Jen’s husband, he was leading the group,” Tovar said of Armando Raygoza. “I got a call from Armando…’Hurry back to the police station. They need to talk with you to identify the person in the hospital.’”
“That made no sense,” Tovar added.
“Everyone was in denial.”
Once back at the police station, Tovar answered a series of questions and was told that he was mostly likely the next of kin to the survivor.
Tovar was heading to the hospital, escorted by a detective, when he stopped and ran back to hug his brother-in-law.
“I’m sorry, man, I’m going to go identify my mom.”
“He knew what I meant.”
After he saw his mother, alive but surrounded by beeping machinery keeping her alive, Tovar found his brother-in-law and other family members waiting in the hospital lobby. It was his job to communicate what was by now tragically clear.
“I was the one who had to tell him, and my grandma, and my family in Mexico.”
Since then, Tovar has visited his mother every day. A carpenter by trade, he shares custody of a 2-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter with his children’s mother. Helping him is his fiancée, Daisy Canales, a 25-year-old administrator in an accounting firm who lives with him in Anaheim.
“We just try to take it a day at a time,” Canales said.
On Wednesday, Tovar returned to work, restoring historic houses in Orange.
Family have set up a GoFundMe page to help with Tamayo’s expenses. It is one of five crowdfunding sites set up since the shooting to help the various families affected by the shooting.
Blanca Ismeralda Tamayo
So far, Tamayo has beaten the odds.
“Everybody knows what happens when you get shot in the head,” Tovar said. “But she’s improving.”
On Tuesday, Tamayo was removed from a ventilator because she can breathe on her own.
Soon after, she was also interacting; blinking and moving her body.
“She can communicate with her toes. I tell her, ‘Mom, if you can hear me, move your toes.” She moves them. ‘Mom, do it again.’ She wiggles them again.”
But her brain is “very swollen,” Tovar added.
“She has a long recovery ahead of her,” said Tovar, who asked that her hospital not be disclosed.
Tovar, along with others who worked at Unified Homes, know the man accused in the shooting, Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, 44. He was shot in the head by police during the confrontation and remains hospitalized. He is the husband of a former employee. A bed-side arraignment has been postponed — most recently on Wednesday — because of Gonzalez’s medical condition.
Police have not yet released a motive in the slayings.
“He wanted to cause as much damage as he could,” Tovar said.
About three or four years ago, Tovar said he worked in Gonzalez’s home for about a week and spent some long lunches talking with him about work and related matters. “That really messes with me,” he said.
But the young carpenter said he needs to brush those thoughts aside, too.
His focus, Tovar repeats, is his mother.
“She’s going to need me a lot.”
“I’m all she has left.”
By Wednesday morning, his mother continued to recover. She was able to sit up for the first time.
By late Wednesday afternoon, Tamayo was alert. And despite pain and difficulty with speaking, she whispered her first words:
“Where’s Matthew?”
Tovar pretended to not hear.
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