Diego Armando Gonzalez was a popular and talented 17-year-old on the cusp of his future. A Hispanic teen known as a "squeaky-clean, All-American boy," he was a senior and the co-captain of the varsity wrestling team at El Modena High School in Orange, California, where he was a CIF champion. Diego also worked as a bagger at a local Stater Bros. grocery store. His family, which included his parents and seven siblings, described him as a good student with no history of drug use who always called his mother to let her know where he was. He had plans to join the military after graduation and then become a firefighter.
That future was stolen on the night of November 9, 2003, when Diego told his parents he was going out for an evening jog and never came home. His failure to call, a break in his usual routine, immediately alerted his parents that something was wrong. The next morning, November 10, his body was discovered by students near a driveway at an abandoned home construction site on Hi Top Lane in the affluent, hilly community of Orange Park Acres. Fearing they would get in trouble for skipping school, the students waited nearly seven hours before reporting their grim discovery to the police. An investigation by the Orange County Sheriff's Department revealed that Diego had been shot twice in the head, once in the forehead and once in the mouth, with a .40-caliber handgun. His killer or killers had then doused his body with a flammable liquid and set him on fire in a failed attempt to destroy evidence and conceal his identity.
The investigation quickly zeroed in on a love triangle involving Diego, his 21-year-old on-again, off-again girlfriend Veronica Paz, and her other boyfriend, 20-year-old Brandan Dante Perry. Paz, who worked as a cashier at the same grocery store as Diego, became enraged that he was trying to rekindle a relationship with another girl while still being intimate with her. Motivated by jealousy and revenge, Paz and Perry, a former high school football star, plotted to murder their rival. The plan was set in motion after a party three months earlier where Perry and Diego had exchanged harsh words, with Diego allegedly using racial slurs against Perry, who is Black. An associate of Diego's reportedly pulled a gun on Perry during the confrontation.
On the night of the murder, Paz lured Diego to the secluded construction site, a local lovers' lane, with the promise of a sexual encounter. Perry was already there, lying in wait with a gun he had purchased after the party confrontation. When Paz and Diego arrived, Perry pulled the unsuspecting teen from the car and shot him twice in the head. After the murder, Perry and Paz met with accomplices and attempted to burn Diego's body, first with lighter fluid and then with diesel fuel. Within days, the Orange County Sheriff's Department arrested Perry, Paz, and several others who had assisted them.
Brandan Perry was arrested on November 12, 2003, and Veronica Paz was arrested on November 14. Both were charged with murder. Several others, including Albert Thomas Medina III and Kimberly Gomez, were arrested and charged as accessories for helping to concoct alibis and for their roles after the murder. In March 2006, Perry pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and agreed to testify against Paz in exchange for a sentence of 25 years to life, thus avoiding a potential sentence of life without parole. Medina and Gomez also pleaded guilty to being accessories and received three years of probation.
In August 2006, a jury convicted Veronica Paz of first-degree murder. However, they acquitted her of the special circumstance of lying in wait, which spared her a sentence of life without parole. In December 2006, she was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. At the sentencing, Diego's father, Felix Gonzalez, told the court, "I miss my son very much and I will never see him again. I want this criminal to receive the full weight of the law." However, in 2008, an appellate court overturned Paz's conviction due to erroneous jury instructions. As she awaited a retrial, Paz took a plea deal. In February 2011, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Before her sentencing, she apologized to Diego's family, saying, "I am really sorry. I never thought this would happen. I didn't want him to die." She was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison and has since been released on parole.
The murder of Diego Gonzalez devastated his family and the El Modena High School community. More than 1,500 people, including many classmates, attended his funeral Mass. At the construction site where he died, friends left candles, flowers, and spray-painted messages on the unfinished foundation walls in his memory. One message read, "We will always have you in our hearts." The case, a tragic story of teenage jealousy and brutal violence, concluded with the convictions of those responsible, but left a permanent void in the lives of all who knew and loved the promising young wrestler.
