Paper-thin protection: The failings of California restraining order system
This series examines the flaws of the California restraining order system, which required those seeking protection to jump through bureaucratic hoops and failed to keep guns out of the hands of those threatening violence.
Part 1: Orders often fail to restrain violence
The state’s restraining-order system fails to deliver the protection it promises. Instead, the system has become a legal labyrinth where rules aren’t the same as reality, procedures differ from courthouse to courthouse, and violators often benefit more than victims.
Lori Jean Smith spent the last day of her life trying to navigate that maze.
She applied for a restraining order in a courthouse that usually handles traffic and small-claims cases. As a result, the request was not granted that day but put on hold and forwarded to another courthouse.
That same night, police say, her husband shot her to death in their Corona home.
Paula Manuel hoped a restraining order would safeguard her 4-year-old son, Josh, from her estranged husband, a man veering steadily toward violence. But the order was not served, rendering it useless.
Last April 21, Josh Manuel – a kindergartner with an ebullient smile and precocious skill at shooting hoops – was shot to death by his father.
“You’re not protected,” said La Habra resident Paula Manuel, whose stoic reserve crumbles at the thought of Josh’s death. “If there had been someone there to help us, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
An Orange County Register survey of all 58 California counties, and interviews with judges, law-enforcement officials, victims of domestic violence and their advocates revealed systemic problems, clerical glitches and judicial inconsistencies.
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Part 2: Abusers allowed to keep guns
The day before William Hoffine killed his teenage son, the San Diego man was served with a restraining order requiring him to surrender his firearms.
But Hoffine did not turn in the guns. Instead, he used one of the weapons – a Glock .45-caliber pistol – to shoot Evan Nash 14 times, emptying one magazine of bullets before reloading and firing again at point-blank range.
Evan, tall as a grown man but still weathering the adolescent afflictions of braces and acne, had just turned 14.
More than two years later, his mother, Lucy Nash, is marred by grief and mired in questions:
Why didn’t anyone confiscate Hoffine’s weapons? Why didn’t anyone make sure he surrendered them as ordered?
The same questions haunt the family of Irma Felix, who was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend Oscar Hernandez inside her Palm Springs dog-grooming business.
Hernandez had also been served with a restraining order that instructed him to turn over his weapons. But in a court statement, Hernandez said he did not agree to the restriction and claimed not to own any guns.
No one checked to see if Hernandez was telling the truth. Even after repeated violations of the order. Even after he left a barrage of messages on Felix’s answering machine, cooing expressions of love one minute, vowing to end her life the next.
And Felix’s family is also asking why.