By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula Times

It has been 29 years and a handful of days since a popular 21-year-old Ventura subscription salesman was shot down after leaving a friend’s Santa Paula-Ojai Road area apartment in Santa Paula early on March 7, 1994, and Eric Velasquez’s mother still is hoping for justice.

Velasquez was killed by a single shot to the chest, fired by an unknown gunman standing in the parking lot. Velasquez died at the scene, leaving behind grief-stricken relatives and friends and baffled police.

The murder has remained a cold case, but one that received an infusion of funds when the state set a $50,000 reward to find Velasquez’s killer.

Velasquez was described by family and friends as devoted to his family, his girlfriend, and his work as a subscription salesman for the Los Angeles Times.

“I think whoever did this is sure suffering in some way or another,” Susan Ventura, Velasquez’s mother, said at the time. “But it’s all over the city — not just in Los Angeles. They can’t control the guns.”

Many residents of the apartment complex said they were unaware of the incident until later in the morning; one who said he heard a strange noise found Velasquez’s body lying in the carport and called police.

Other witnesses told Santa Paula police investigators that the gunman may have been a man who was involved in an argument with Velasquez earlier in the evening when he arrived at the complex to visit a friend. The man who Velasquez was seen arguing with was a friend of a man who lived in the apartment complex.

The two exchanged words and, reportedly, Velasquez said something related to the other person threatening him with a gun in Ventura, but the two shook hands after the man de nied he had pulled the weapon.

Velasquez had been student at UC Santa Barbara for one semester before taking leave because he and his family could no longer afford the tuition. But he found a job he seemed to be made for — selling subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times door-to-door, every weekday from 4 to 9 p.m.

Most months, he was the top salesman or at least second from the top, taking pride in his work and success in selling subscriptions.

His family and friends described Velasquez as outgoing, gregarious, and persuasive — perfect traits for a job in sales.
To save money, Velasquez lived with his parents, baby-sat his 10-year-old brother in the afternoons, and on the weekends drove to La Puente, where he had attended high school, to visit his high school girlfriend, a romance that never waned.

He was returning from La Puente the evening that he stopped off in Santa Paula to see a friend and subsequently was killed.

Velasquez’s mother, Susan Ventura, set up a $1,000 reward out of frustration in September 1995.

“I want justice to be served in my son’s murder,” Ventura said then. “I want his killer off the streets.”

In October 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the murder of Velasquez. The reward was part of a $200,000 allotment made to spur leads in four cold cases.

At the time, the Governor’s Office noted: “The Santa Paula Police Department has exhausted all investigative leads and requested that a reward be offered to encourage anyone with information about this murder to contact Detective S. Virani at 805-525-4474. The victim’s family has also offered a $1,000 reward and rewards are offered by Crime Stoppers and We-Tip.”

Had he not been killed, Eric Velasquez would now be 50 years old.