‘A huge heart’: Man paralyzed as teen in 2004 shooting outside Oakland high school dies 20 years later

OAKLAND — Juan Gaxiola-Chavez’s wounded body finally gave out, but his family will always remember his decades-long battle to stay alive.

He was only 15 and a Castlemont High School freshman when he was shot in the neck outside of the East Oakland campus on June 9, 2004. The shooting left him a quadriplegic. Bedridden and on a ventilator ever since, he died Nov. 9 at a Los Angeles rehab facility at the age of 35.

“He was the most selfless person I ever met in my life,” his mother, Maria Hernandez, said. “He had a huge heart and so much love. I have no words to describe it.”

On the day that Hernandez had to make the decision to turn off her son’s ventilator, she “wanted to be selfish,” she said.

“I wanted to just keep him in this world even if he was already gone,” she said. “That day was one of the hardest days of my life, apart from the day of his accident.”

For 20 years, Gaxiola-Chavez’s family visited him several times each year, gathering for birthdays and holidays. Though he could not move, he could think and speak, and he loved to eat and try international cuisines, his mother said. From his bed and wheelchair, he watched his four younger siblings grow up, Hernandez said.

“(There) was never a hug after that, nothing except the ones we were giving him,” Hernandez said. “But through his eyes, he would express a lot of love.”

On the day of the shooting, Gaxiola-Chavez’s heart stopped and the doctors revived him, Hernandez said.

“I want to think he made an agreement with God to live, even on the wheelchair and to live the way he lived, but just to be with us for 20 years,” she said. “He sacrificed many years of pain just to see his siblings grow and to see me in giving me so much love and me giving him so much love.”

An autopsy performed by the Los Angeles County Department of the Medical Examiner determined it was the gunshot wound that caused his death, and the still-unsolved case was counted as the 75th homicide of Oakland’s 84 homicides in 2024 as of Tuesday morning.

Homicide unit cold case investigators still believe he was the unintended victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting that also wounded another Castlemont High student. They are now in the process of tracking down the then-witnesses and reviewing evidence collected at the time.

The shooting happened about noon June 9, 2004, after classes had ended and the day before school let out for the summer. Police believe he was hit by a stray bullet.

An Oakland Tribune news story at the time described Gaxiola-Chavez as a “chubby-cheeked Castlemont High freshman who liked to spend his days on his computer playing the strategy game Empire Earth.”

The case was given at the time to now-retired Oakland homicide investigator Gus Galindo because everyone thought Gaxiola-Chavez would die soon after the shooting.

Instead, Gaxiola-Chavez stayed in Oakland’s Highland Hospital for three months, breathing and eating through tubes and learning how to talk again. His mother visited him for two to three hours every day. Galindo visited him too.

In a recent interview, Galindo remembered the teen had never been in trouble with the law and that from everything he could gather, Gaxiola-Chavez was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He still believes “this kid had nothing to do with anything, he was just standing there,” Galindo said.

Gaxiola-Chavez eventually was transferred to a sub-acute care center in Saratoga, but when he became an adult, he had to be moved again. Because of issues with insurance, he was placed in a care facility in Los Angeles.

“He enjoyed life. He enjoyed going to the movies, going to restaurants, spending time with us, visiting when we were visiting from up north,” she said.

Hernandez even became medically certified to provide basic care for him so that she could take him on outings herself.

Due to difficulties with health coverage, Gaxiola-Chavez had to frequently move, spending time in more than 20 facilities over many years, Hernandez said. He became bedridden for the last three-and-a-half years of his life because his wheelchair broke, which caused him to lose his muscle strength.

Galindo still believes someone knows who shot Gaxiola-Chavez and the other 15-year-old youth and wants them to come forward. The detective had one helpful but frustrating piece of evidence to work with — a series of digital images and sound taken from inside an AC Transit bus.

Several popping noises can be heard on the tape along with yelling. Seconds later, a dark-colored two-door Ford Thunderbird speeds off in the camera’s view.

“It is obviously clear a car drove by and fired indiscriminately in front of a crowded school,” Galindo said. The vehicle’s license plate cannot be seen in the images.

Galindo believed two suspects were involved and they were probably familiar to students at the school. The second boy shot that day received only minor injuries.

Galindo still has hope that someone who has “been sitting on key information for years and now hopefully they’ve grown as a person and will come forward and step up and do the right thing. Maybe they will have a change of heart and philosophy about helping the police.”

After Gaxiola-Chavez’s death, Hernandez consented for his organs to be donated. She learned recently that one of his kidneys went to a recipient in Texas, where she now lives.

“I feel like he wanted to be here,” she said.

Hernandez plans to spread Gaxiola-Chavez’s ashes in Mexico, where he was born, accompanied by her children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. She said that she still thinks of her son’s injury as an accident.

“I really want to forgive the person that pulled the trigger,” she said. “I leave it on God’s hands, whoever the person that did that to my son, whether it was intentional or unintentional, he’s the one who’s going to have to deal with that.”

Anyone with information about the case may contact police at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950.