SAN DIEGO (CN) — The mother of a woman killed by an ex-Marine advanced her lawsuit against the U.S. government over how her daughter's killer was able to legally buy the gun he used in the murder.
Ex-Marine Eduardo Arriola is serving life in prison for the 2018 murder of Devon Rideout, a Navy corpsman who lived in the same apartment complex as Arriola in Oceanside, California, but otherwise had no relationship with the man. Arriola, who had a substantial record of mental illness within the military, told police he shot Rideout because she was trespassing.
The victim's mother, Leslie Woods, recounted Arriola's mental problems, and the government's documentation of them, in a lawsuit asserting that he should have been disqualified from purchasing a gun under federal law. Indeed Arriola was deemed incompetent to stand trial on military desertion charges in 2016, and was subsequently committed to a Federal Bureau of Prisons psychiatric facility where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and ultimately discharged from the military for his mental incompetency.
Despite his background, however, Arriola’s name was not included on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System — the national background check system that lists people prohibited from buying guns, including people who have been committed to mental institutions and people dishonorably discharged from the military. Woods says the Department of Defense had a duty to inform the FBI that Arriola should be deemed disqualified from owning a gun.
A judge in San Diego on Thursday denied a motion by the government to dismiss Woods' suit.
"Because the general public’s reliance that the federal system would keep guns out of the hands of the mentally incompetent caused the public to forgo other choices and protections, the negligent operation of these gun control measures put Ms. Rideout in a worse situation than if no protective framework existed," U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta wrote.
The government argued that Arriola’s name didn’t appear on the NICS because of a failure to communicate the information between various federal departments. Ohta concluded, however, that this represented an operational failure, not an error in communication.
Another argument that the Biden appointee show down was that the court lacked jurisdiction because California law would not hold a private person liable under similar circumstances. Ohta found that the Department of Defense, by failing to get Arriola’s information on the NICS system, caused Arriola to be able to buy the murder weapon, constituting a negligent undertaking of action according to California law.
“Plaintiff alleged that the DOD [the United States Department of Defense] failed to exercise reasonable care in its NICS [the National Instant Criminal Background Check System] undertaking by failing to submit Mr. Arriola’s disqualifying information,” Ohta wrote. “Plaintiff also sufficiently alleged that the missing data in NICS caused Mr. Arriola to be able to purchase a gun, and Ms. Rideout was shot and killed by that gun. The court therefore concludes that plaintiff has adequately pled that the United States’ actions satisfy all the elements of a California negligent undertaking cause of action. Because plaintiff has demonstrated that the United States would be liable under state law, the court finds that it can be liable under the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act].”
Woods seeks both economic and noneconomic damages in her lawsuit.
"It is a significant case. This is to our knowledge the only opinion in any court dealing with this issue about liability for failure to properly conduct the government’s obligations under the Brady Act,” said Woods' attorney, Eugene Iredale, referring to the legislation that created the NICS.
Iredale said that Woods' lawsuit is also seeking some assurance that the government and branches of the military will revise their procedures for reporting and communication so that information about Brady Act violations can properly get people placed on the NICS who should be on it and prohibited from legally buying a gun.
Representatives for the government did not immediately return a request for comment.
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