Student of Cupertino's De Anza College Dies of Gunshot Wounds

Richard Vega, a De Anza College student, died from gunshot wounds he suffered while walking in a residential area in Campbell.

At about 10:20 p.m. on Sunday, Mar. 3, Campbell Police responded to a report of a shooting on Latimer Avenue near Dunster Drive in Campbell, according to Captain Charley Adams of the Campbell Police Department.

Officers found 18-year-old Vega, a Campbell resident, suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim was transported to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center for emergency surgery. He died shortly after midnight.

Vega’s sister, Nancy Vega Carbajal, told La Voz Weekly, De Anza College’s newspaper, that the motive for the shooting is unknown, her brother was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

According to police, a dark colored sedan was seen leaving the area eastbound on Latimer Avenue toward Winchester Boulevard just after the shooting.

Vega graduated from Santa Clara High School and was a football player there, according to La Voz.

He was well liked and bright, Veronica Avila, De Anza Reading Department chairman, who had Vega in a fall class told La Voz.

“I saw a lot of potential in him,” she said. “He was one of those students, if they had the privilege of time and space, they would do really well.”

Another instructor, Jennifer Myhre, told La Voz about a poster project for her sociology class that now is particularly significant to her.

The poster focused on peace, with a drawing of a dove being shot out of a gun and text that reads  “An eye 4 an eye will only make the world blind by Mahatma Gandi.”

Myhre told La Voz the picture was “beautiful and totally painful given what happened.”

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