HOLLISTER – The death of Santa Cruz business owner Shannon Collins hits home for Hollister councilman Victor Gomez.
"I pretty much stared right into my wife's eyes. We looked at each other across the room and we knew instantly it pretty much was an identical situation that this family is going through that we went through five years ago," Gomez said.
Santa Cruz Police say Collins was stabbed to death by Charles Edwards.
Gomez's sister, Elizabeth Gomez, was brutally attacked, strangled and stabbed multiple times by her ex-boyfriend, Samuel Turner, in 2007.
"It felt like we were pretty much re-living the couple days after she was murdered. Same hospital, same type of brutal crime," he said.
And now Gomez feels hurt and angry that Collins' family is now going through the same thing.
Earlier this year in Salinas, Christopher Sorenson, diagnosed as schizophrenic, was found incompetent to stand trial for the murder of his 71-year-old mother.
He faced multiple juries in past years that deemed him competent enough to go back into society.
Victor Gomez said something needs to change.
"I really hope that this brings light to the situation," he said. "I can understand if this happened once. But for it to happen two, three, multiple times from patients being released...I think that's enough to say, ‘Hey, something needs to be done here.'"
Unlike Gomez's sister's attacker, Edwards was let out early because of a clerical error.
Shortly after that, police said he brutally stabbed Collins while she was walking on Broadway.
While Edwards would've gotten out at some point, many people in the community question whether something like this could've happened anyway.
"There's a lot of concern in the community about safety with relation to people with mental illnesses," said Pam Rogers-Wyman of Santa Cruz County Mental Health.
She said there's no help locally for violent offenders who come to an area after treatment at the state level, like Edwards and Turner.
The county only has a mental health outreach program that helps non-violent offenders, something Victor Gomez said isn't enough.
"Once you see repeated situations happen like these, it's alarming," he said.
