Lawsuit alleges gaps in GPS tracking of Washington County man who killed his wife and her sister

After being charged in Washington County with strangulation, assault and other counts of domestic violence for alleged threats and attacks on his wife and daughter, Carlos Jimenez-Vargas was released from custody pending his trial in October 2022. He was placed on electronic monitoring and ordered not to have any contact with his wife, daughter or his wife's family.

But county officials never gave the company that operates the ankle bracelet the addresses of Jimenez-Vargas' wife or relatives to ensure he stayed far away from their homes, a lawsuit says.

“Without exclusion addresses, the electronic surveillance of Carlos Jimenez-Vargas was useless,” the lawsuit states.

The following month, police said, Jimenez-Vargas shot and killed his wife, Gabriela Jimenez, 43, and her sister, Lenin Hernandez-Rosa, 38, who were found outside Jimenez's home in the Hillsboro neighborhood in the 23,000 block of Southwest Scholls Ferry Road.

Jimenez-Vargas, 46, was found in the house with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and died later that night at a hospital, according to police.

The indictment states that Jimenez-Vargas was at his wife's house for at least 50 minutes on the day of the murder and for 14 minutes two days earlier without being alerted by his GPS tracking device.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Portland by Hernandez-Rosa's family, alleges that Washington County and Vigilnet America, the company that operates the county's ankle-tracking monitoring system, showed “deliberate indifference” to victims' rights by failing to track locations prohibited for Jimenez-Vargas, failing to monitor GPS alerts outside of normal business hours or on weekends, and failing to send warnings of potential violations to the sheriff's office rather than to court personnel.

“Had Mr. Jimenez-Vargas been adequately monitored, the defendants would have learned of the violation of his release agreement on November 14, 2022, two days before the murders, which should have led to Mr. Jimenez-Vargas' arrest, thus preventing the deaths,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against Vigilnet America, Washington County, Washington County Community Corrections, Washington County Sheriff's Office, Washington County Circuit Court, the Oregon Judicial Department and the state.

“Our deepest condolences go out to the family and all those affected by this tragedy,” Julie McCloud, a spokeswoman for Washington County, said by email. The county declined to comment on the lawsuit's allegations because of the pending litigation.

Jimenez-Vargas was arrested on October 6, 2022, for domestic violence.

According to an affidavit, Gabriela Jimenez told Washington County Sheriff's officials that on October 4, 2022, she caught her husband standing on a ladder outside their home spying on their daughter while she was in the shower.

The 23-year-old daughter told investigators her father grabbed her by the neck and slammed her into a window in May 2022, leaving her severely injured and dazed, the court document said. The 23-year-old said she was bathing her own 7-year-old daughter when the attack occurred.

Gabriela Jimenez told police she tried to leave Jimenez-Vargas earlier this year, but he “grabbed a bag of guns” and demanded that the two shoot each other until she promised to stay in the marriage, the affidavit states.

He was released on Oct. 17, 2022, to the home of Amalia Guadalupe Velasquez, who was deemed a suitable host by the Washington County Sheriff's Office, records show.

On November 16, 2022, at 8 p.m., Jimenez-Vargas returned to the family home about 10 miles south of Hillsboro and killed his wife and her sister.

Shortly after the shooting, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton wrote to the presiding district judge, calling the double murder and suicide a “tragic example of failure in pretrial release.”

Barton wrote that the wife's home address was never given to the GPS monitoring company by the court.

“This failure rendered the GPS monitoring virtually useless. Tragically, a review of the GPS data after the double murder suggests that if effective GPS monitoring had been in place, Mr. Vargas likely would have been arrested for violating the release agreement two days before the double murder/suicide,” Barton wrote.

— Maxine Bernstein covers federal courts and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.

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