In the early morning hours of September 15, 2013, a party at a Residence Inn in the Vienna area of Fairfax County, Virginia, took a fatal turn, ending the life of 16-year-old Gerard Gomez. The male teenager, a junior at Mount Vernon High School, was found shot on a sidewalk outside the hotel around 2 a.m. and was pronounced dead at the scene despite resuscitation efforts by responding officers.
Friends and family remembered Gomez as a well-liked and popular student who played lacrosse and was known for his easy smile.
The tragic events unfolded after a dispute at a birthday party held in one of the hotel rooms. The party, attended by friends and a number of uninvited guests, was disrupted when 23-year-old Jose Alberto Blanco-Calzadilla became angry and confronted another partygoer, lifting his shirt to reveal a handgun in his waistband. This act brought the party to an end, but as people were leaving, Gomez, who had been drinking, confronted Blanco-Calzadilla about displaying the weapon. According to prosecutors, Gomez was 'calling the defendant's bluff' when he asked, “Are you going to use that strap?” In response, Blanco-Calzadilla stepped back, pulled out the gun, and fired a single shot into Gomez's chest, killing him almost instantly.
Later that same day, Jose Alberto Blanco-Calzadilla, of Alexandria, turned himself in to the Fairfax County Police. He was initially charged with murder. In May 2014, Blanco-Calzadilla reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, avoiding the murder and gun charges he originally faced. He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for the killing of Gerard Gomez. The news of the arrest came as a small comfort to Gomez's grieving family and the more than 200 friends and classmates who had gathered for a vigil in his memory.
