Oregon Will Pay $6 Million After Man Murders Wife and Her Sister When Court Fails to Activate Ankle Monitor

In a tragic train of miscommunication, two Oregon sisters were shot and killed by Carlos Jimenez-Vargas (46) when he was released from custody with an ankle monitor that was not activated to prevent him from making contact with his wife.

The State Will Pay the Two Families a Total of $6 Million in Damages

State attorneys are now preparing to pay the families of the man’s wife,  Gabriela Jimenez (43), and her sister, Lenin Rosas Hernandez (38), $6 million in a damages claim.

According to court records, the deaths of the two women on November 16, 2022, were the result of a miscommunication between the GPS tracking vendor, Vigilnet, and the Washington County Circuit Court’s pretrial release office.

A month before the double shooting, after which Carlos Jimenez-Vargas turned the gun on himself, resulting in a fatal injury, he had been arrested for strangling his wife. He was ordered released, but the judge barred him from visiting his wife and ruled that he wear a GPS ankle monitor to ensure compliance.

According to evidence, a pretrial release officer failed to provide Vigilnet with the address of the man’s wife, and the GPS monitoring company failed to request the missing information.

An Alert Would Have Been Sent Within One Minute Had the Ankle Monitor Been Activated,

Court records reveal that Jimenez-Vargas stood outside the home where his wife was living in Southwest Scholls Ferry Road for a quarter of an hour on November 14, 2022. Had the ankle monitor been activated, an alert would have been sent to the release office within one minute.

However, this never happened. Instead, Jimenez-Vargas returned to the house two days later and shot and killed both his wife and her sister, before turning the gun on himself.

In a deposition, the court release officer, Rachel A. Clark, said she had not been trained to provide exclusion zone addresses to Vigilnet, nor did she have access to a victim information database while her background check was pending.

The two sisters attended schools in Hillsboro and graduated from Portland State University. They were employed as substitute teachers until Gabriela Jimenez started working in human resources and her sister began working as a claims adjuster.

Gabriela Jimenez is survived by four children, and her sister leaves behind her husband and three children.

The two families will each receive $3 million. Additionally, Vigilnet has also agreed to a settlement figure that is being kept confidential.