A 31-year-old California graduate student and botanist was killed last week in Mexico while conducting field research, the school confirmed to The Daily Beast.
Gabriel Trujillo, 31, was a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the University of California Berkeley. His father told the Associated Press that he went missing earlier this month while collecting plant samples in Sonora, Mexico with his body being discovered on June 22, days after his fiancée reported him missing. Anthony Trujillo added that his son was fatally shot seven times and was found in an SUV.
A school spokesperson said that the campus received confirmation of Trujillo’s death last Friday and that “local police authorities are investigating” the “heartbreaking news.”
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“Gabe was a passionate ecologist, field biologist, and advocate for diverse voices in science. He was a member of a tightly knit group of graduate students in ecology and his partner is also a member of our campus community,” faculty members in the Department of Integrative Biology said in an email to student and staff, and obtained by The Daily Beast. “We all face a world that is less bright because of this loss.”
Trujillo’s father said that his son’s voyage across the border wasn’t his first—and that he had spent the last four years looking for a shrub called the common buttonbush. In his student profile for his research group, Trujillo said his interests include “studying the forces that drive evolution in tropical plants and insects.”
“More specifically, the rare transition of tropical woody plants into the temperate zone,” the Ph.D. student added. “These types of transitions shape the diversity and structure of forests around the world. My research focuses on how functional plant traits associated with frost tolerance are lost and or gained, and how these traits facilitate species range expansion from their tropical origin into temperate zones.”
The grad student went into Noglaes from Arizona on June 17. The next day, according to AP, he spoke to his fiancée, Rozanne Cruz-de Hoyos, as well as his father. Cruz-de Hoyos, who is also a Ph.D. fellow researching tree mortality, told the outlet that the couple dedicated their lives to conservation and “felt that Indigenous hands have taken care of these lands for time immemorial.”
She added that Trujillo was drawn to Sonora and had hoped to connect with his indigenous roots in the region. On his trip, she said, Trujillo was also looking for potential sites to build a garden for wetland restoration with buttonbush.
But when Trjullo eventually stopped answering her calls and messages, Cruz-de Hoyos became concerned. Days later, on June 22, authorities discovered his body, still inside his SUV, more than 60 miles from his Airbnb, the AP reported.
“Evidently he was in the wrong place,” Anthony Trujillo told the outlet. The Sonora state prosecutor’s office said they are working “to establish the facts, conditions and causes of the death,” but did not provide details into the case or label Trujillo's death a homicide.
A funeral for Trujillo will be held on July 5 and July 6 in Michigan and California. In a GoFundMe dedicated to helping Trujillo’s body be sent from Mexico, family and friends described the botanist as “brilliant, genuine, talented, adventurous, brave, generous, and above all unfailingly kind and loving to everyone.”
“He was a son, brother, cherished family member, fiancé, and friend,” the GoFundMe added. “He was a deeply spiritual Danzante and was reconnecting to his Indigenous Opata and Nahua ancestry.”
