The Minnesota man shot and killed in Lawrence City Hall last week had schizophrenia and was distressed after being stranded en route to his grandmother, according to his friend and his sister.
Omar Dominguez Gavilan, 28, of Buffalo, Minnesota, was on a trip to Mexico to live with his grandmother. It was his first long trip without family, his friend and sister said in interviews, and that likely contributed to a mental health crisis the day he was shot.
According to Lawrence police, Gavilan was shot and killed by a court security officer after breaking a window in City Hall and engaging in a fight with the officer.
Gavilan departed in a car with four other passengers, said Miranda Waade, Gavilan’s friend of 10 years who lives in Minnesota. But he was kicked out of the vehicle at some point during the trip because he was asking to stop too many times to use the restroom and use his vape. His family does not know where exactly he was dropped, but he eventually made his way to the Lawrence Service Area east of town.
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The Lawrence Police Department last week said the Kansas Highway Patrol was called to remove Gavilan from the service station due to “erratic behavior.” But KHP spokesperson April McCollum said KHP troopers encountered him on their meal break and noticed him pacing.
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An LPD spokesperson did not answer questions about discrepancies between the police and KHP’s account, instead saying an investigation was still underway and would be released in a few weeks.
According to McCollum, Gavilan told officers he had missed a bus and asked to be transported to the Amtrak station in Lawrence. But there are no Amtrak lines through Lawrence that go toward Mexico City. The line through Lawrence runs east to Chicago and west to Los Angeles. Waade said this probably left Gavilan anxious about how he would continue his journey.
“He was on the side of the road hitchhiking at a service station, which kind of just shows he didn’t really have anybody there,” Waade said. “And he was just kind of, like, lost.”
Gavilan told his mother he was trying to find a bus Monday morning so he could continue toward Mexico, Waade said.
His family was unsure why Gavilan made his way to City Hall, but said it may have been one of the only buildings open that early. Police said Gavilan entered City Hall through a locked back door just before 8 a.m. Monday, Jan. 5. City and police spokespeople did not answer questions seeking more information on how Gavilan entered the building.
Gavilan’s sister, Alondra Dominguez Gavilan, said his schizophrenia started with challenges sleeping about a decade ago. At one point, he went to the emergency room because of it, she said, and spent some time at Prairie Care, a Minnesota psychiatric care provider. She said he struggled with the medication he was supposed to take because he didn’t like the way it made him feel.
Gavilan also had an Assertive Community Treatment team, which is an all-inclusive mental health treatment model to help adults with a “serious and persistent mental illness who have been diagnosed with a primary thought disorder (schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, or other psychotic disorder) with needs that exceed available care and result in frequent hospitalizations,” according to the Central Minnesota Mental Health Center. Locally, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center has an ACT team.
His sister and friend said Gavilan became disoriented in the City Hall stairwell because not all doors to leave the stairwell are unlocked, including the fourth floor. They said Gavilan seemed to be in significant distress while on a call with his uncle. They said Gavilan’s schizophrenia may have caused him to feel threatened or unsafe.
City and police spokespeople declined to respond to questions about the incident.
“Whenever he would be in situations like that where he just felt super lost, he would think people were trying to hurt him because of his schizophrenia,” Waade said. “He was very functioning, and like a really good person. One of the best people that I knew. But his schizophrenia just kind of made his head turn against everybody.”
Lawrence police say Gavilan went up a stairwell to the fourth floor, broke a window and entered the office area, which is secured and not open to the public. The police confirmed Gavilan did not have a firearm.
“It’s a sad and tragic event,” police department spokesperson Laura McCabe said. “I consider myself friends with these people and was personally affected. The employees certainly felt threatened, which is why they called court security for help.”
Both Alondra and Waade said Gavilan was not violent by nature, and they believe the situation should have been handled as a mental health crisis rather than with lethal force.
“I believe that he was just overly stressed out, overly angry, panicking, maybe hungry, maybe tired,” Alondra said. “I don’t know what the doors of the building in the stairwell look like. My brother knows absolutely nothing about Kansas. He did not know what the building was like and how to access it, where you could or couldn’t go.”
Alondra said the family’s frustrations start with KHP. She says they should have worked to provide him more assistance than just dropping him off in Lawrence. McCollum said last week that Gavilan had displayed “unusual behavior but did not provide a basis for arrest or involuntary commitment to a substance abuse or mental health facility.”
“I feel like that should be a mandatory thing of, ‘Who is this random man on the highway, hitchhiking?’” Alondra said. “So I believe they’re the first ones to fail him, and if they are not responsible for that, then they also failed by not contacting the police department to question who my brother was.
“I believe if those things had happened, then they would have been like, ‘OK, this is who he is. This is where he’s going. This is what he needs. Let’s figure out how we can help him,’” Alondra continued. “But instead, that didn’t happen. It was just, ‘OK, we’re going to pick you up and drop you off and let you fend for yourself.’”
Waade said Gavilan helped raise his 9-year-old niece. Alondra said her brother was always the smartest of their siblings, was into physical fitness and health and was a freestyle rapper.
“We just want to know the truth,” she said. “We do believe that his death could have been prevented and we do want to seek justice, because we do believe this is unfair.”
Alondra has started an online fundraiser seeking funds for “justice and support for Omar.”
“Omar’s story is not just about loss, but about the urgent need to raise awareness for those struggling with mental health,” the fundraiser says.
“We want to honor his memory by sharing his music and starting a program to help others like him. We also need support to cover the costs of bringing Omar home from Kansas, funeral expenses, and legal fees to seek justice for the injustice he suffered,” it continues.
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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Contributed photoMan killed at Lawrence City Hall had schizophrenia, was stranded during trip, his sister says
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
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Contributed photoMan killed at Lawrence City Hall had schizophrenia, was stranded during trip, his sister says
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
