The grieving wife of a man who was brutally shot and killed on a Metro bus in Commerce last week is speaking out about the crime, which police are describing as random and unprovoked.
On May 16, just before five o’clock in the evening, a Metro bus near Slauson and Boxford avenues saw a fatal shooting.
According to the authorities, Winston Apolinario Rivera, 30, boarded the bus in the 6200 block of Slauson and sat behind Juan Luis Gomez-Ramirez, 32, who was his victim.
Prosecutors from the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office stated in a news release that “as the bus came to a stop, the defendant allegedly walked to the rear exit, stopped behind Gomez-Ramirez, pointed a gun at his head and shot, instantly killing him.”
The victim’s widow, Sarahi Lopez, told KTLA’s Chris Wolfe that despite the crime scene being somewhat bloodstained from the senseless shooting, she still feels driven to visit it.
According to her lawyer Mario Acosta Jr., Lopez expressed her feelings of confusion and lack of answers by saying, “With every day that passes, I feel more and more confused.”
Lopez claimed she has been in excruciating pain over how the fatal incident occurred and that her spouse, who is also their child’s father and is one year old, was not the kind to get into arguments with others.
The pair, who were vacationing in Los Angeles in February, were Mexican special education teachers. Her spouse, desiring to remain longer but in need of money, took a job packing clothing at a Commerce warehouse near the scene of the shooting.
According to authorities, Rivera was apprehended near the 6100 block of Peachtree Street, where he was concealed behind a train. The DA’s office has since charged the 30-year-old with murder and with using a firearm during the commission of a crime.
Via her lawyer, Lopez stated, “I need the killer to tell me why he did what he did.” “I think he should be punished for breaking up our family.”
The murder of Gomez-Ramirez occurred just a few hours after Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members addressed the media about their response to a string of high-profile violent incidents that occurred on and around buses and trains.
There were two distinct stabbings on the Metro system on May 13 alone. A grandmother in Studio City was killed in a stabbing on a train in the weeks preceding those occurrences, while a bus driver and passenger in South Los Angeles were hurt in another.
aboard May 5, a homeless lady viciously attacked a driver aboard a city of Los Angeles-operated Dash bus. The violence was caught on camera.
An airsoft gun-wielding homeless took control of a Metro bus in March and smashed it into the downtown Los Angeles Ritz-Carlton.
Now, the family’s lawyer is trying to assist Lopez with immigration matters so she can remain in the country and take part in the trial of her husband’s alleged killer. The widow is thinking about suing Metro and possibly other companies.
