Gail Adams Aaskov, author of two books, also is a Realtor, property manager and a town commissioner.
Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
Gail Adams Aaskov remembers getting the call that Sunday morning in February seven years ago.
On the other end of the phone was Ocean Ridge Town Clerk Karen Hancsak, who was crying as she told Aaskov that a former deputy town clerk and police dispatcher, Serena Gomez and her husband, Joe, a former Ocean Ridge police officer, were both dead.
The two, who had moved to the central Florida town of Eustis, had been shot and killed by a fellow Eustis police officer, who had also killed his wife before pointing his Glock semi-automatic handgun at his head and pulling the trigger.
The triple murder and suicide sent shock waves through Ocean Ridge, especially its law enforcement and town government community. Now it is the subject of a new book Aaskov has written.
Titled Signal 5, the police code for murder, the book gives detailed accounts of what happened that day and what led up to the murder. It also raises a question about what it was that led Cpl. Mike Mount to become so violent that he would kill his wife, his co-worker and his co-worker’s wife.
“I wrote this book to tell the story and, of course, I had some questions about Joe and his relationship with this officer,” Aaskov said.
Aaskov also had several personal reasons for writing the book.
A 20-year resident of Ocean Ridge, Aaskov served on the Town Commission from 1995 to 2004. She returned to commission last year.
During her first stint on the commission, Aaskov got to know Serena and Joe Gomez fairly well.
“Serena was super sweet, she was a real nurturer,” Aaskov said.
In fact, she says, when she first heard that the couple were moving, she tried to get them to change their minds. “We pleaded with them not to go,” she said.
Aaskov said she got involved in writing the book when Serena Gomez’s mother, Debra James, approached her and asked for her help. James was actually in her daughter’s home, hiding in another room, when the shooting took place.
An attorney that James had contacted after the shooting had started the book but couldn’t complete it.
“Serena’s mother gave me page after page of handwritten notes,” Aaskov said.
In the book, Aaskov tells how Mount and his wife, Kimberly, were friends with Serena and Joe Gomez and how just a week before the shooting, Mount and Joe Gomez had gotten into an argument. Mount accused Gomez of flirting with Kimberly, who worked as an administrative clerk in the Police Department.
On the night of the shooting, Aaskov explains in the book, Kim Mount had asked to spend the night with Serena and Joe Gomez, in part because of marital problems she was having with her husband. She brought her two children with her.
James, her then 6-year-old grandson and Kim Mount’s two children escaped from the 6 a.m. gunfire unharmed. Behind them four adults lay dead.
Though many of the questions about the murder are answered in the book, Aaskov leaves one mystery unsolved.
“Why was Michael Mount so jealous that he killed three people?” she wrote.
To get a copy, contact Aaskov at 276-3220 or stop by her office at 5011 N. Ocean Blvd., Ocean Ridge.
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