Gabriel Trujillo Obituary News: Missing UC Berkeley Field Biologist Found dead in his car in Mexican State of Sonora
An ecologist and field biologist who was enrolled in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, was discovered dead last week in the Mexican state of Sonora. He was apparently shot to death inside his car while out gathering plants.
In his SUV, 31-year-old Gabriel Trujillo was discovered dead on June 22 after leaving for a day trip to harvest plants in a far-off region of Sonora. According to the Associated Press, Trujillo was researching the common buttonbush, a blooming shrub that thrives in a variety of settings across North America.
The morning of June 19, when Trujillo was last heard from, he had spoken to Roxanne Cruz-de Hoyos, his fiance. He had crossed into Mexico by car from Arizona two days prior, residing in an Airbnb while conducting his fieldwork. This was to be Trujillo’s final journey before the pair got married and started attempting to have a child, as Cruz-de Hoyos explains to the AP. She was having fertility treatment at the time, and the couple planned to try to create a family.
Cruz-de Hoyos claims that as soon as she lost contact with Trujillo, with whom she spoke frequently, and when his Airbnb hosts reported that his possessions were still there but he had not returned, she quickly took a flight to Mexico.
Trujillo’s body was discovered 62 miles from the Airbnb on June 22. According to the AP, neither a cause of death nor a murder have been declared by Mexican officials. But according to The NY Post, his “bullet-ridden body” was discovered.
According to the AP, his father, Anthony Trujillo, stated, “Evidently he was in the wrong place.” After his son’s body was found, the senior Trujillo also took a flight to Mexico; on Thursday, he was returning to Michigan with his ashes.
Gabriel was and is “beyond what words can express,” Cruz-de Hoyos says on a GoFundMe page set up to collect money for his funeral preparations. In addition to being bright, sincere, talented, courageous, brave, and generous, he was also consistently kind and kind to everyone. He was a beloved son, brother, fiancĂ©, friend, and member of the family. He was a very spiritual Danzante who was re-establishing his connection to his Opata and Nahua Native American roots.
Gabriel “would have wanted deeply” for there to be an upcoming Danza Azteca event in the Bay Area to honour his life, she added. Next week, there will be another funeral in Michigan.
“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science,” according to a statement from the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. Because of this loss, the world is less shining for all of us.
In Sonora, where meth and fentanyl are traded, there is a lot of cartel violence and a conflict between two of the organizations. Seven individuals were slain in one such encounter on March 20. As InSight Crime documented in March, the Caborca Cartel and the Chapitos have been involved in brutal battles along drug routes into Arizona.
In January, a deadly gunfight between the military and a cartel in the state of Sinaloa, which borders Sonora to the south, left 29 people dead in Culiacán.
The AP points out that victims can also include ordinary citizens. In an ambush strike in Sonora in November 2019, nine Americans were slain, including three mothers and six children. The women were eventually revealed to be members of a Mormon polygamist sect that had been present in Mexico at the time.