Martinez remembered, joyous nature missed

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on Feb. 8, 2012. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

It never took Edwin Martinez long to make friends.

When Cesar Peña and Miguel Alizaga came to their first Automotive Fundamentals class this semester, they both saw Martinez's friendly face and knew the class would be a little less stressful with him there.

"He was always laughing, smiling, making jokes and lightening the mood," said Peña, who has known Martinez for 9 years.

Martinez's recognizable and memorable smile stretched across his face with a charitable personality to match.

His long, wavy black hair, which he was growing out for a second time as a donation to Locks of Love, bounced off his shoulders while dancing with family, joking with friends or while he was kicking around a soccer ball between classes or during a game.

Alizaga talked to him that Monday, Jan. 23, about last semester when the two met and how Martinez effectively disappeared from classes and the Contra Costa College soccer team, but also how this semester could be different.

After the three-hour class in the Automotive Technology Center, around 4:30 p.m., Alizaga let Martinez borrow his phone to call his older sister, Jenny, for a ride back to their apartment complex on 21st Street in Richmond between Barrett and Macdonald avenues.

"I said, ‘I'll see you tomorrow if I don't see you after I use the bathroom,'" Alizaga said. "When I came back out, he was gone."

That was the last time Edwin Martinez was on the San Pablo campus.

Martinez was killed 2 1/2 hours later in front of his Richmond apartment complex before he and his sister could come back to CCC for night classes.

‘Senseless, stupid'

Martinez, 22, and his sister were sitting in their car at 6:45 p.m. on Jan. 23 in front of their apartment complex at Nevin Avenue and 21st Street in Richmond ready to return to CCC for night classes when an apparently random shooting ended his life.

"It's a senseless, stupid tragedy," said Nancy Rupprecht, Martinez's first automotive services professor from the fall.

Martinez was shot twice while in his sister's car. Police pronounced him dead at the scene.

His death was not only sudden and surprising, but also unbelievable to some.

"I thought it was a joke (when I heard)," said Martinez's oldest sister, Karla Manis.

Manis was away from her phone, feeding her baby, when she said she had a feeling she was missing a call.

She walked to the other room, picked up her phone and went to her contacts list and found her brother's name and number saved with a picture of him.

"I was calling him when (Sabrina Raj, his girlfriend) called back," Manis said. "She started crying."

After Raj explained what happened, Manis drove to the apartment complex to see her brother, the youngest of three siblings.

"I came here and it was true," Manis said. "I saw the cop and (then) Edwin in the car with the tape around him."

Competitive spirit

Martinez was born May 4, 1989 in Houston, Texas to Patricia Martinez and Francisco Ramos.

After bouncing around the East Bay, including Berkeley and Oakland, the family moved to San Pablo in 1996 and Edwin Martinez was enrolled at Riverside Elementary.

He started playing soccer soon after, his aunt, Ericka Martinez, said, at 7 years old for the youth soccer team La Rosa in Richmond.

Next, Edwin Martinez played in the San Pablo league and was on the Panthers with his nephew Dennis as well as his CCC classmate, Peña.

Martinez continued to play soccer growing up and played his last two years at Richmond High School until graduating in 2008.

His uncle, Carlos Martinez, said Edwin Martinez loved soccer and the World Cup and he hated to lose.

He was on the Comet men's soccer team in the fall, but had to come late to practice because his automotive classes ran about a half-hour into the start of practice, CCC coach Rudy Zeller said.

"He was on the team for four to six weeks and for about five games," Zeller said. "He was quiet, I didn't even know he had a sister."

Zeller said Martinez was on the fringes of the team and stopped coming to games and practices around September, the same time he stopped coming to Rupprecht's automotive classes.

Jamal Alzanbaai, sophomore center defender for the Comets, gave Martinez a few rides home last season and was just as surprised by his death as everyone else who knew him.

"He didn't seem to be around a bad group of people," Alzanbaai said. "When you make friends you can tell what kind of crowd of people they hang out with. I knew he wasn't into anything dangerous like that."

Hands on

Martinez came to CCC after taking a few years off from school to work.

He worked at Little Caesars until he got a job at D-Tech Auto Repair on Macdonald Avenue in Richmond, Ericka Martinez said.

Edwin Martinez's new job as a mechanic put him to work using his hands and inspired him to get back into school.

When he was 5 years old, Martinez went with his aunt to a flea market at the Oakland Coliseum and an $11 electronic gun with lights and sounds grabbed his attention.

"He destroyed it," Ericka Martinez said. "It only took from the flea market to the house in El Cerrito. He said, ‘I want to see all the lights and where they're coming from.'"

But, Manis, his sister, said, "He knew how to fix it."

She said her brother was intelligent, but had a tendency to not do his homework up to his abilities.

"He was really smart," Manis said. "He would slack off, but he could've been an honor student."

Daniel Dereon, owner of D-Tech Auto Repair, across from Lavonya DeJean Middle School, said Martinez always wanted to know more in the 1 1/2 years he worked there on-and-off.

"He wanted to learn everything," Dereon said. "He could make a lot of things in his life."

Carlos Martinez said his nephew would love to show off his skills to friends, offering to fix their cars for free.

"He went all the way to Berkeley to fix a car," Martinez said. "He wasn't charging, just wanting to do it.

"That's how he was."