The last message Sarahi Varela López received from her husband was that he was heading home from work on Thursday afternoon.
The couple and their 1-year-old son had arrived in Los Angeles a few months earlier on vacation, but running out of funds and wanting to stay longer, Juan Luis Gómez Ramírez found work packing clothes in a warehouse in Commerce.
It usually took him 35 minutes on two buses to return to his brother-in-law's house in East Los Angeles. But he never showed up.
Approximately 13 minutes after sending the message, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department responded to a call of shots fired on a Metro bus, Line 108, along the 6200 block of Slauson Avenue, two stops from work. . When Gómez Ramírez did not arrive two hours later, Varela López began a frantic search.
Few details have been released, but authorities said Monday that Gomez Ramirez was on the bus when Winston Rivera boarded. When the bus stopped, Rivera walked to the rear exit, stood behind Gómez Ramírez, pointed a gun at his head and shot him, according to a Los Angeles County District press release. Lawyer. Jorge Gascón.
Gómez Ramírez was rushed to a hospital, but did not survive. Officers detained Rivera a short distance from the scene under a train. Gascón on Monday accused Rivera, 30, of murder in the death of Gomez Ramirez.
“They took a great father from my son. “My son only enjoyed his father for a short time,” he said in an interview. “They took away someone he loved very much.”
It is the second murder of a Metro passenger in less than a month and came hours after Mayor Karen Bass ordered increased enforcement on Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority trains and buses. in an effort to ease fears among passengers.
Mirna Soza, a 66-year-old Nicaraguan, was stabbed at the Universal City station last month as she got off the train. There are uncanny similarities between the two attacks. Both victims were dependent on the train or bus and died in an unprovoked attack.
The sheriff's office has not said whether Gómez Ramírez exchanged words with the shooter, but Varela López said that is unlikely. Even in marital discussions, her husband raised objections. He always stayed away from problems, avoided them, she said. He was known among friends and family as the responsible one, the one who showed up to work on time. The one who helped friends.
It's difficult to understand why an armed man was allowed on a bus, said Mario Acosta Jr., a lawyer representing the family. Airports don't allow smuggling on planes, he notes, but there is no such protocol for buses.
“There is $150 million allocated each year” for Metro law enforcement, he said. “But I don't know where it's going.”
Varela López met Gómez Ramírez while they were studying to be teachers in Puebla, Mexico. As part of their courses, they taught classes to children with disabilities. From the beginning there was a spark between them that grew as they shared their passions for their profession. She was impressed by his manners, dedication and attention.
“We share dreams, the same dreams,” he said. Then those dreams turned into plans to have three children and travel. He eventually wanted to become a history teacher.
They married two years ago and quickly began raising their family. She taught children at a public school in her town of Acajete during the day and coached a youth basketball team in the afternoon. He motivated the children to do better, to go further.
“This is very sad news for those who had the pleasure of knowing him and who was an extraordinary human being,” the father of a basketball player wrote to Varela López after hearing the news. “We are suffering a lot.”
A family photo of Sarahi Varela López, holding her 1-year-old son Elliot with her husband, Juan Luis Gómez Ramírez. Ramirez was killed last week on a Metro bus in Commerce.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The couple was excited to come to Los Angeles. They had saved money and Varela López's mother accompanied them on the trip. They went to Disneyland, went out to eat with the family, and planned to stay a few weeks and come back. But they decided to stay longer, explore more places and wait for their brother, who was also a teacher in Puebla, to meet them in the coming months at a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament, a Magna collectible card game.
Varela López was feeding her son when Gómez Ramírez's last text message arrived. She called him so the boy could greet her father. He did not answer. A few minutes later, she sent him another text to let him know she had called. She then she sent another one. She was hungry. When would she be home? About two hours after leaving work, still nothing. Everything is alright? she asked. Nothing. Answer me, she wrote, an hour later.
Worried, her sister-in-law took her and the baby to pick him up from work. Not there. She could see that her phone was still on because the two shared their locations. Her location scrolled across the map: first to a hospital, then to the East Los Angeles sheriff's station. She went to both of them, with a photo on her phone, asking if anyone had seen Gómez Ramírez.
As night fell, he thought perhaps he had been attacked and was unconscious. A few years ago, someone hit his brother in the back of the head and robbed him after getting off a bus in downtown Los Angeles.
“A lot of different things were going through my mind,” he said. He went to the nearby police station in Montebello and filed a missing persons report.
“They told me there was nothing they could do other than file a report. They said these things happen often and then they come home,” she said. “But I insisted. He is not like that. Something is happening because he was following his location and it kept changing.”
They said I could follow him and monitor hospitals and police to see if he showed up. She then returned to the station in East Los Angeles. Nothing, again. The location was moved to the city center. She then stopped locating her husband on the phone. There she found a deputy and told him what happened.
“The location shows it's here, but I don't see it,” he told the agent. A few minutes later, the detectives approached her and began asking her questions.
“That's when they told me someone had died,” he said. “They asked me if I recognized his wallet.”
“When I received the news I couldn't believe it. I couldn’t pay attention,” she said. She heard them tell his sister-in-law that he was shot and taken to the hospital, and that a suspect was in custody.
“I told the police it's not him,” he said. “Maybe you mixed up the wallet. “It can't be him.”
“How he was dressed?” they asked. She described it. “Is he.”
“I was sure it was a dream,” she said. “I thought she was going to come home and see her baby.”
The next morning, a doctor told him that his heart had no heartbeat when he arrived at the hospital.
“I had so many dreams, so many goals,” he said. “We need justice for him.”
“No one deserves to live in an unsafe place, where they are afraid,” he said. “Let alone get a call, 'I'm sorry, already passed away.”
A GoFundMe has been created to help the family.
Times staff writers Keri Blakeinger and James Queally contributed to this report.
