There wasn’t one misstep or a single failure that led to the tragedy that will forever haunt Frank Perez.
But when he learned that his son — his loving, yet tortured, son who struggled with severe mental illness — fatally shot his beloved 11-year-old grandson before turning the gun on himself earlier this month at a Nevada airport, Perez couldn’t help but think of all the missed opportunities that preceded the horrific shooting.
“We were crying for help,” Perez said. “We tried to get him help.”
For years, and more urgently in recent months, Perez said their family had tried to better protect Callan, 11, and get his father, 37-year-old Giovanni Perez, the help he needed. But at every turn, the senior Perez said he felt like they hit roadblocks in complicated mental health and family court systems.
“I always feared something would happen like this,” Perez said. But he said he can’t simply blame his son, who had been hospitalized several times since returning from a military deployment, diagnosed with PTSD.
Instead, Perez sees a web of failed systems: narrow services for military veterans, limited mental health treatment options, insufficient gun restrictions and not enough protections for children living with unstable parents.
“He loved Callan,” Perez said of his son. “He would just have these bouts of mental illness, and unfortunately, this time it won. … He would have episodes of psychosis and see things, and I believe that’s what happened that day. It wasn’t him who did that.”
Local police investigating the April 13 shooting in Elko, Nev., haven’t determined a motive but did note that Giovanni Perez had a history of PTSD and had been in a “custody dispute” with his son’s grandparents, according to an update from the Elko Police Department. Frank Perez said he and his wife had been working with Callan’s maternal grandmother to get custody of the boy, but the court had kept him fully in his dad’s custody.
Officers responded to the Elko Regional Airport following reports of an active shooter, where they found Giovanni Perez dead near the ticket counter and his son critically wounded inside the airport’s restroom, a news release from the department said.
First responders took Callan to a local hospital, but he was soon pronounced dead.
The father and son had been traveling in a rental vehicle through Nevada when it became disabled and they were towed to the airport to get a new rental, police said. While at the airport, the pair went into the restroom, exited, and then reentered together. That’s when Perez shot his son several times, police said. The veteran then exited the restroom and fatally shot himself near the ticket counter.
The shooting has sent shock waves through communities from Utah — where the father and son briefly lived in recent months — to Northern California, where the Perez family has lived for decades, including Giovanni and Callan for most of their lives.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy and our prayers and thoughts are with the family,” the Merced City School District, where Callan had been previously enrolled, shared in a statement.
Although Frank Perez’s worst fears were realized with the shooting, he said that, just before it happened, the family had been hopeful Giovanni was making a turn for the better.
He said the pair were on the road because they’d reconnected with family and were driving back to the Merced area. Months before, Giovanni moved them away and cut off contact, Frank Perez said. Callan’s school and the family had at one point last year filed missing persons reports for them.
As Giovanni’s mental state became less stable in recent years, Frank Perez said he and their extended family tried many avenues to get his son and grandson more help.
There was the effort by the grandparents to gain custody, but a judge ruled against them late last year. He said he also tried to warn law enforcement — highway patrol officers, sheriff’s deputies, anyone who would listen — when his son bought a firearm, but he was told it was purchased legally, so officers couldn’t intervene. The family also tried to get Giovanni more regular psychiatric care, especially through Veterans Affairs, but he said his son only successfully got disability compensation for his diagnosis.
“We couldn’t force him to get care, we couldn’t force him to take meds,” Perez said. He said his son had been diagnosed with PTSD with bipolar tendencies, and his psychosis made him scared to take medications.
Giovanni Perez served for about four years in and around Iraq, his father said, and although he was trained as a cook, he was in several battle scenarios that scarred him.
“When he came back, he was changed,” Perez said. “He wasn’t the bright-eyed 19-year-old that I remembered.”
Still, Perez said his son had many stretches of stable mental health, when he was a devoted father of three. Callan was the middle of his sons, the only one of whom he had sole custody.
He had recently worked as a truck driver and enjoyed making music; his dad called him an “exceptional lyricist.”
Callan was a smart, joyful kid who looked up to his dad and was close with his younger brother. He was a big 49ers fan who dreamed of playing professional football, Frank Perez said.
On a GoFundMe page started for memorial and legal expenses on behalf of Callan’s maternal grandmother, family described the boy as “ incredibly smart, funny and kind.”
“He had the biggest heart and the sweetest soul,” the fundraiser for the family said. His maternal grandmother declined to talk further to The Times, saying it was still too soon.
But the GoFundMe mentioned her plans for a “legal fight… to pursue justice in [Callan’s] name, against a system that failed him and to give a voice to other children that are not being protected.”
Frank Perez said he would like to see changes to the family court system, because he feels their very serious concerns about his son were too easily brushed aside.
“When a grandparent or a parent of somebody close raises concerns of this level,” Perez said, “I think there should be more [intervention to make sure] that child’s safe.”
But he also wishes that Veterans Affairs had provided more services, that the mental health system allowed family more opportunities to intervene and that law enforcement listened when he warned them about his son’s gun.
“If they want these young kids to go fight for our country, they should be prepared to help them when they come back,” Perez said. “There’s a lack of accountability.”
But for now, he’s trying to remember the good times the family had together. Birthday parties. Football games. Outdoor adventures.
Just last summer, Callan won third place among fourth-graders who entered Merced County’s “Father of the Year” essay contest. It’s still hard for Frank Perez to grasp that his son so violently took both his grandson’s, and his own, life.
“They were best friends,” Perez said of Callan and his dad. “He loved Callan, Callan loved him.”
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