The widow of a man shot in an unprovoked attack on a subway bus in Los Angeles is speaking out

The wife of a man tragically shot and killed on a subway bus in Commerce last week is speaking out, sharing her pain over what investigators call a random and unprovoked killing.

The fatal shooting on May 16 occurred shortly before 5 p.m. on a subway bus at Slauson and Boxford avenues.

According to authorities, the suspect, 30-year-old Winston Apolinario Rivera, boarded the bus in the 6200 block of Slauson and sat behind his victim, 32-year-old Juan Luis Gomez-Ramirez.

“As the bus stopped, the defendant allegedly walked to the rear exit, stood behind Gomez-Ramirez, pointed a gun at his head and fired, causing his immediate death,” prosecutors with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.

Sarahi Lopez, the victim’s widow, told KTLA’s Chris Wolfe that she still feels the urge to visit the crime scene, parts of which are still stained with blood from the senseless shooting.

“Every day that goes by, I feel more and more confused, like I don’t have any answers,” Lopez said in Spanish, as her lawyer Mario Acosta Jr. translated.

Lopez said she agonized over how the fatal incident occurred. Her husband and father of her one-year-old son was not the type to cause conflict with anyone.

The couple worked as special education teachers in Mexico and arrived in Los Angeles for a vacation in February. Because her husband wanted to stay longer but needed money, he got a job packing clothes at a Commerce warehouse not far from where the shooting occurred.

Rivera was captured in the 6100 block of Peachtree Street, where he was hiding under a train, officials said. The 30-year-old has now been charged by the public prosecutor with murder and the special allegation that he used a firearm in the commission of a crime.

“The murderer needs to tell me why he did what he did,” Lopez said through her attorney. “I want him to be punished for destroying our family.”

Gomez-Ramirez’s killing came just hours after board members of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority held a news conference to discuss their response to a series of high-profile violent incidents on and near buses and trains.

On May 13th alone, there were two separate stabbings on board the subway. In the weeks preceding these incidents, there was a stabbing on a train that killed a grandmother in Studio City and another stabbing in South Los Angeles that injured a bus driver and a passenger.

On May 5, a driver of a Dash bus operated by the City of LA was brutally assaulted by a homeless woman in an attack captured on video.

In March, a transient armed with an airsoft gun hijacked a Metro bus and crashed into the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Los Angeles.

The family’s lawyer is now working to help Lopez with immigration issues so she can remain in the United States and attend the trial of her husband’s accused killer. The widow is considering a lawsuit against Metro and possibly other companies.

A GoFundMe campaign has now been launched to help her and her young son get through this terrible ordeal.