Missed Warning: Mental Health Center Overlooked FBI Alert Before Mosque Shooting

The FBI rang Caleb Vazquez’s mother on May 14 and told her that her son was making worrisome comments about school shootings on a hidden part of the internet. She said she left a message for the mental health center right away. The next day she told Caleb’s therapist and later a program director about the warning. She says the center ignored those alerts.

On the morning of May 18, staff from Park Mental Health called Caleb’s mom to say he was not at the building. Security video showed him walking out the night before at 8 p.m. His parents spent the morning driving around looking for him. Later that day Caleb and another teen opened fire at a mosque in San Diego, killing three people before they took their own lives.

It is still unclear whether Caleb was allowed to leave that night or if he broke the center’s rules. The facility offers different programs, some with round‑the‑clock watch and others with only occasional counseling. In a statement to a local radio station, the center said the lawsuit is misguided and that only Caleb and his friend are responsible for what happened.

This was not the first time alarms were raised about Caleb. Earlier in 2026 he spent about three days in a hospital after telling a classmate he wanted to shoot up a school. About a year before that, police warned his family after he showed extreme admiration for Nazis and they seized 26 guns from his father under a California law that lets authorities take weapons from people seen as dangerous. Investigators say Caleb met the other shooter, Cain Clark, online and that both became radicalized there, though police have not shared more details about how they connected or whose guns were used.