A musician putting away his gear at the end of the night was fatally struck by a stray bullet just minutes after performing at Golden Bull Bar in Oakland, and now, there's a $20,000 reward to find out who did it.
The young man was identified by his family as Emiliano Nevarez, a 26-year-old sound engineer who was a bass player and singer for a punk band called The Lucky Eejits, where friends Casey Fitzpatrick and Tyler Salinas wrote that their "best friend, brother and bass player" was "taken from us so suddenly by gunfire."
"We have been in a dark world of sadness and pure confusion as to why this happened to our beloved, beautiful and talented friend," they wrote on Facebook.
Police say Nevarez was caught in the 1:15 a.m. Sunday crossfire of an argument between two men outside the Golden Bull on 14th Street who later fled the scene. The fight and shooting was captured on surveillance video, police said, which has not been released.
Lt. Roland Holmgren told Telemundo on Monday morning that the young man killed had "nothing to do" with the fighting or shooting. Holmgren said the victim was simply "playing music at a local nightclub" and was in the process of moving his equipment out of the club to get back home.
An unidentified 34-year-old man, another bystander, was also shot and wounded in the altercation.
His mother told the Oakland Tribune she was devastated, but heartened that her son died doing what he loved.
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"I'm biased because I thought he was great," Nevarez's mother Bernadette Valadez told the newspaper. "Like any good guitarist, he would experiment and do a lot of riffs that were unusual. He would do his own thing, so I just felt he was trying to be the best musician he could be."
She said her son graduated Antioch High School and earned a bachelor's degree in audio engineering from Ex'pression College in Emeryville.
There is a $20,000 reward to find the gunman; members of the community with information about the case are asked to call Oakland Police at (510) 238-3821 or Crime Stoppers at (510) 777-8572.
Telemundo contributed to this report.