‘A huge heart’: Man paralyzed as teen in 2004 shooting outside Oakland high school dies 20 years later

OAKLAND — Juan Gaxiola-Chavez’s wounded body finally gave out, but his family will always remember his decades-long battle to stay alive.

He was only 15 and a Castlemont High School freshman when he was shot in the neck outside of the East Oakland campus on June 9, 2004. The shooting left him a quadriplegic. Bedridden and on a ventilator ever since, he died Nov. 9 at a Los Angeles rehab facility at the age of 35.

“He was the most selfless person I ever met in my life,” his mother, Maria Hernandez, said.