One of the gunmen who allegedly shot and killed three people at the San Diego Islamic Center went missing from a mental health treatment facility in Normal Heights the night before prosecutors say he and another teen carried out the attack.
In a new lawsuit, obtained by Times of San Diego, the parents of Caleb Vazquez said officials at Park Mental Health failed to ensure their son’s safety, and ultimately the safety of others, by not monitoring him.
The lawsuit states Caleb Vazquez was living at a Park Mental Health residential facility in Normal Heights, while receiving treatment in North Park. Clinicians were treating Vazquez for diagnoses of autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, body dysmorphia, social anxiety and severe depression with psychotic episodes.
On May 15, Caleb Vazquez’s mother, Lilliana, told her son’s therapist the FBI had contacted her after they found Vazquez had been discussing school shootings and suicides on the “dark web.”
That evening, Park Mental Health’s program contacted Lilliana Vazquez to discuss the FBI’s concerns.
Three days later, on May 18, the program director texted Lilliana Vazquez, “Do you have an idea of where Caleb could be?” Vazquez replied, “Are you saying that he’s missing?”
“Yes,” the program director allegedly responded.
Around 9 a.m. Vazquez and her husband, Marco, drove to the Normal Heights facility in search of their son. The house manager showed them a video of Vazquez pacing back and forth inside the home before leaving the property around 8:24 p.m. the night before the shooting.
After watching the surveillance footage, Lilliana and Marco Vazquez drove to Park Mental’s North Park headquarters to speak with the program director. The program director declined to meet with them, according to the lawsuit. Another employee told them to file a missing persons report.
When Lilliana Vazquez asked why no one told her that her son went missing the night before, no one responded, the lawsuit alleges.
Vazquez’s parents left Park Mental around 11:45 a.m. and drove back to Chula Vista.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Lilliana and Marco Vazquez, at 11:43 a.m. San Diego police received their first call for an active shooting across town at the San Diego Islamic Center. Their son and 17-year-old Cain Clark were allegedly at the Islamic Center, carrying out the attack.
Two hours earlier, at 9:42 a.m., Clark’s mom had called SDPD to report her son as a missing person. An hour after that, she called again to say weapons were missing from the home, and that she found a possible suicide note. SDPD at that time elevated their search for the teens, based on the potential for a violent attack.
Warning signs of Vazquez’s mental health and obsession with mass shooters and racial ideologies had been well documented for more than a year before the May 18 mass shooting.
Court documents first reported by Times of San Diego reveal school administrators at High Tech High in Chula Vista had contacted Vazquez’s parents, the school resource officer and Chula Vista Police to report Vazquez’s alarming behavior.
The most serious red flag surfaced in January 2025 when two of Vazquez’s friends went to High Tech High’s vice principal to report that Vazquez had told them not to go to school, suggesting that he was planning on carrying out a mass shooting, according to a January 2025 gun violence restraining order.
School administrators called Chula Vista Police, and detectives conducted a welfare check.
Detectives, according to the gun violence restraining order, said Marco Vazquez, Caleb’s father, was “uncooperative,” and there was a “lack of cooperation.” The family also prohibited detectives from interviewing Caleb Vazquez alone, and his parents refused to let detectives view what Caleb Vazquez’s friends had said were “concerning” social media posts, according to the order.
The following day, detectives from the Chula Vista Police Department went to High Tech High and learned more about Vazquez’s troubling behavior.
The school’s vice principal, according to court documents, said Vazquez came to school one day dressed as the fictional serial killer Dexter Morgan from the HBO program “Dexter.”
The vice principal said students overheard Vazquez mentioning a “day of retribution” and that he “expressed fascination” with mass shooters who conducted fatal attacks at a synagogue in Poway, in Isla Vista, California; El Paso; Norway and elsewhere, according to the restraining order.
On another occasion, students and faculty spotted Vazquez pointing a banana at other students and pretending it was a gun, and showing up to school with a shaved head so he could look similar to those in concentration camps.
During subsequent interviews, Vazquez told school resource officers and members of the San Diego County Psychiatric Emergency Response Team that he was upset about his breakup with his girlfriend and was also becoming “increasingly infatuated” with mass shootings and World War II. Vazquez said he idolized Adolf Hitler and was gathering information about him and mass shooters on the “dark web.”
Following the interviews with the San Diego County Psychiatric Emergency Response Team, Vazquez was placed on a 72-hour mental health hold for evaluation.
According to a court minute order, also obtained by the Times of San Diego, on March 11, 2025, Judge Enrique Camarena, less than two months after police visited Vazquez, officially rescinded the temporary gun violence restraining order and dismissed it “without prejudice.”
It is unclear where Vazquez resided between the March 2025 restraining order up until he was admitted to Park Mental Health.
Times of San Diego reached out to Park Mental for comment on the lawsuit but did not receive a response.
