SANTA ANA, Calif. (CNS) — A trial date was set Friday to determine the mental competency of a man charged with gunning down four people in Orange.

Orange County prosecutors want a medical doctor who specializes in neurological trauma to evaluate Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, 44. Two other experts — one for prosecutors and the other for defense attorneys — have agreed he is not mentally competent to assist in his legal defense for the March 31 shootings.


What You Need To Know

  • A trial date was set Friday to determine the mental competency of a man charged with gunning down four people in Orange

  • Orange County prosecutors want a medical doctor who specializes in neurological trauma to evaluate Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez

  • Gonzalez was charged April 2 with multiple murder and attempted murder charges, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted

  • Police say Gonzalez specifically targeted Unified Homes, a real estate company selling manufactured homes

Senior Deputy District Attorney Mena Guirguis told Orange County Superior Court Judge Cheri Pham he wanted more time to have the expert review Gonzalez, but the judge said the law prevented that possibility at this stage of the legal proceedings, so both sides agreed to go forward with setting a trial date on Gonzalez's mental competence with an Oct. 1 pretrial date, so if the third expert agrees with the other two, the attorneys could agree to cancel the Oct. 22 trial date.

If Gonzalez is declared incompetent by Pham, doctors would have up to two years to work on restoring his mental competency. If he remained unable to assist in his defense, he would be placed in a conservatorship indefinitely until he was ready to stand trial.

The question would then turn to where Gonzalez would be placed, and that would be determined by a state agency.

Defense attorneys for Gonzalez picked a psychiatrist who specializes in neurology, while prosecutors chose a psychologist. Guirguis said prosecutors were limited by who they could select and ideally wanted to have a medical doctor with a background in head injuries to review the defendant.

"This is a whole different animal," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told Pham, referring to the fact that most competency hearings involve defendants with mental healh issues.

Instead of psychiatric issues, Gonzalez's competency is related to "taking a bullet to the head" and "obviously significant trauma," Spitzer said.

 

Gonzalez's attorney, Ken Morrison of the Orange County Public Defender's Office, said the conclusions reached by the two experts who have already reviewed his client match the experience he and his partner in the case, Kira Rubin, had while repeatedly visiting him in a hospital. They are incapable of communicating with him because of the bullet wound and resulting surgery, Morrison said.

The charges against Gonzalez include four counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and one count of attempted murder.

Gonzalez also faces a special-circumstance allegation of multiple murders and sentence enhancements alleging the personal discharge of a firearm causing death, premeditation, personal discharge of a firearm causing great bodily injury, personal use of a firearm and personal discharge of a firearm.

Police say Gonzalez specifically targeted Unified Homes, a real estate company selling manufactured homes, at 202 W. Lincoln Ave., and was acquainted either personally or professionally with all of the victims, who were identified by police as 50-year-old company co-owner Luis Tovar; his daughter, 28-year-old Jenevieve Raygoza; 9-year-old Matthew Farias; and company employee Leticia Solis Guzman, 58.

Raygoza, who worked for her father's company, is survived by her husband and two young children. The 9-year-old boy's mother, Blanca Ismeralda Tamayo, was hospitalized in critical condition, but has since been released from the hospital.