The fallout from a murder committed last month in Las Vegas has three children and their aunt wrapped up in legal entanglements, preventing them from returning home to Mesquite.
Candace Garza is currently grappling with getting her sister’s three children home after their mother was violently killed while vacationing on the Las Vegas Strip.
“It’s honestly… and I don’t say this lightly… it’s the most difficult, challenging that I’ve ever dealt with in my entire life,” Garza said, according to CBS News. “Your sister is taken from you in a brutal murder, there’s orphans that can’t go home.”
Nydia Lopez-Garcia was pronounced dead at the scene by officers responding to a call from a suicidal person at the MGM Grand Hotel on the afternoon of May 28, according to a statement from the Las Vegas Police Department.
Lopez-Garcia’s former husband, 42-year-old Fernando Gomez of Sunnyvale, Texas, was found at the scene and was arrested after receiving medical treatment for allegedly self-inflicted wounds.
Gomez was booked in Clark County Detention Center and charged with open murder — meaning under Nevada law that the judge or a jury will determine the level of the offense.
At the time of the lethal encounter, Garza explained that the three children — two fathered by Gomez — were in another hotel room.
“Her ex followed her here… or was here… I’m uncertain on that, but he found her and [he] did murder her,” said Garza, according to CBS News.
Domestic violence and stalking frequently go hand-in-hand, as The Dallas Express reported.
Of the 42,771 crimes logged in Dallas by the Dallas Police Department in the first five months of this year, 5,520 have been family violence crimes, according to the open crime analytics dashboard. This number may be higher since an alleged cyberattack has rendered the City’s publicly available crime statistics unreliable from May 2, as The Dallas Express reported.
In his testimony to investigators, Gomez claimed that he had reconnected with Lopez-Garcia a few weeks prior, according to KSNV. While spending time together that weekend in Las Vegas as planned, they began to fight, and he killed her with a piece of glass, he reportedly told the authorities.
“He stated that he was guilty of killing her and had nothing to hide,” the police report read, according to KSNV.
In the aftermath of this deadly domestic violence incident, Garza traveled to Las Vegas and successfully had her sister’s children released to her by CPS, according to CBS News. Yet they still aren’t allowed to leave Clark County.
“I’m told that the judges in Las Vegas need to communicate with the judges in Texas and they have to transfer jurisdiction,” Garza explained, according to CBS News. “A Texas CPS worker tells me that they haven’t been in touch with the judges here. I think it’s just the legal system and it’s just not designed to handle these sorts of situations.”
As Garza continues to deal with a sluggish out-of-state legal process that could take up to two months, she is unable to work. Her friends, family, and coworkers have set up a GoFundMe to help raise funds for hotel bills, the funeral, and more.
The murder rate in Las Vegas nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021 but has since begun to steadily decrease. In 2022, 146 murders were logged.
That same year in Dallas, 214 murders were logged, according to the open crime analytics dashboard. In the first four months of 2023, murder has increased by more than 20% year over year.
Dallas PD officials like Chief Eddie Garcia have pointed to the significant staffing shortage within the department.
“We need hundreds of more officers in the city of Dallas. There’s no question about it,” Garcia told The Dallas Express.
DPD’s Executive Assistant Chief David Pughes has commented on the relationship between an understaffed police force and unrestrained violent crime.
“There is a direct correlation between the number of officers you have and the ability to control violent crime. You can put together specific groups of people to go out and target these locations,” he said, per NBC DFW.
Downtown Dallas, in particular, struggles with crime — especially compared to the downtown area of neighboring Fort Worth, which uses a dedicated unit to conduct patrols alongside private security guards.
