Aryanna Avila, 23, a Hispanic female, died on September 9, 2025, after being shot during a car-to-car attack in the San Gabriel Valley. The shooting was reported at about 1:34–1:35 a.m. near Arrow Highway and Irwindale Avenue; officers soon found her in the passenger seat of a white sedan parked along Enid Avenue by Gladstone Middle School, where she’d been driven after the gunfire. She was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead later that morning.
The county medical examiner listed the manner of death as homicide, with a perforating gunshot wound of the neck.
Detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau and Irwindale Police canvassed the two related scenes—the intersection where shots were fired and the nearby curb where the sedan came to rest—collecting witness accounts and surveillance leads. Early reports described CPR efforts at the roadside as officers pieced together that the volley of shots struck only the passenger, leaving the driver uninjured. The Gun Violence Archive later classified the case as a drive-by, car-to-car shooting, underscoring how quickly the confrontation unfolded in traffic before the wounded vehicle pulled off the roadway.
Within a day, investigators identified a suspect: Basilio Perez Valencia of Azusa. Irwindale and West Covina officers stopped his vehicle and took him into custody on September 10. Prosecutors filed charges on September 12, including one count of murder and one count of attempted murder, along with firearm enhancements. Court records noted he was held without bail as his first Pomona Superior Court date approached later that month, while officials publicly said they had not established a definitive motive.
Community memorials soon marked the date of the killing, while regional outlets kept a steady drumbeat of updates as the case moved from roadside crime scenes into the courts. Public summaries and memorial listings recorded the essentials—the time, place, and nature of the attack; the discovery of the mortally wounded passenger; and the swift arrest that followed—tracing the arc from a predawn burst of violence to a defendant facing murder charges in a suburban courtroom.
