Crystal Gonzalez, 37, a Hispanic/Latina woman, was found dead on the morning of July 17, 2025, inside a short-term rental on Morgan Lane in Garden Grove after police conducted a welfare check. Two young children in the home were unharmed and told officers they hadn’t known what happened. Investigators identified her as the wife of Miguel Lopez a 35-year-old former California Highway Patrol officer from Lodi.
In the hours after the killing, Lopez drove roughly 350 miles north to Stockton and confronted a 54-year-old man in the parking lot of a CrossFit gym on West Eight Mile Road, where he shot the man and then shot himself. The man, later identified by the San Joaquin County Medical Examiner as Robert Nelson Jr., died of his injuries days later, and authorities classified the Stockton case as a murder-suicide linked to Gonzalez’s killing.
Detectives from Garden Grove and Stockton coordinated their investigations and publicly tied the two scenes together the day of the shootings. Garden Grove police said their homicide investigation into Gonzalez’s death remained active while they worked to trace Lopez’s movements and motives; with the suspected shooter dead at the Stockton scene, there were no arrests. Memorial and victim-advocacy listings later recorded Gonzalez’s death date and location consistent with the police accounts.
