In the early hours of November 15, 2025, 25-year-old woman Ebony Plancarte was at a family home on the 8400 block of San Luis Avenue in South Gate, California, when a domestic dispute escalated into deadly violence. Around 2:27–2:30 a.m., a woman inside the residence called for help, reporting that a man was in the home firing a gun. Responding South Gate police officers arrived within minutes and saw a man armed with a firearm coming out the front door of the house.
He opened fire on the officers, who returned shots as the confrontation unfolded in the darkened residential street.
After the brief exchange outside, the gunman retreated back into the home. Officers then heard additional gunshots from inside, prompting them to push into the residence to search for victims. Inside, they found a scene that investigators would later describe as a domestic violence attack involving family members. A woman in her 70s, believed to be a grandmother figure in the household, was found wounded but alive and was quickly pulled from the home and taken to a hospital, where she was reported to be in stable condition.
As officers continued clearing the house, they discovered two women who had been shot multiple times. One of them was identified as Ebony Plancarte, 25, and the other as a woman in her early 50s. Both were pronounced dead at the scene by Los Angeles County Fire Department personnel. Authorities later stated that the suspect, identified by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner as 51-year-old Eduardo Vasquez, was related to all three women and that the incident appeared to stem from a domestic dispute. Early reports described the older woman as Vasquez's ex-wife and the younger as his stepdaughter, both targeted in the attack inside the home.
The violence did not end with the shootings of the women. When officers moved deeper into the residence, they found Vasquez dead inside from what investigators determined to be an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm matching the one used to shoot at officers was recovered at the scene, and authorities later noted that the suspect possessed more than one gun. With Vasquez dead, there were no arrests in the case; law enforcement has treated him as the sole suspect responsible for killing Ebony Plancarte and the older woman and for wounding the grandmother.
In the days that followed, investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Homicide Bureau pieced together a history of turmoil behind the deadly night. They revealed that in 2024, a domestic violence police report had been filed involving Vasquez, but the victim later recanted, and no lasting legal action appears to have followed. Authorities also said that Vasquez had been living across the street from his ex-wife, underscoring the proximity and continuing tension that can characterize abusive relationships even after formal separation. The killing of Ebony Plancarte and her relative, followed by the suspect's suicide, has been publicly framed by investigators as a tragic culmination of domestic violence within a family home, with no indication of any additional suspects beyond the gunman who died inside the house that night.
