OCEANSIDE, Calif. (KGTV) - Friends and family gathered Sunday evening to remember a young woman who was shot and killed Friday night in her apartment.
Devon Rideout, 24, moved to the Dylan Apartments in Oceanside after serving the U.S. Navy in Virginia. Her aunt, Paulette Gibson, helped her find a place. That was her last memory of the woman she called kind, radiant and driven.
"She just loves people, of all varieties, as you can see from the amount of people who have shown up," Gibson said. She said Devon used to call her "grandma tia" because she was always there for her.
At Devon's apartment Sunday night, she wasn't home, but her friends and family held her in their thoughts and hearts, crying, laughing between sobs from memories, and holding one another up with hugs.
Some, unable to reconcile what happened Friday night.
"I got the phone call from her mom," Gibson choked her pain down, and continued, "and two hours later we started to drive up here... just numb, just really really numb."
Outside Devon's door, sniffles were punctuated with crinkling of bouquets, holding her favorite flower (a sunflower) bringing sunshine, like she did.
"She liked helping people out yeah that was the biggest thing, very hard to say no she was always willing to help any way she could," Gibson said. Devon was a U.S. Navy Corpsman, serving her country about four years, according to family.
Devon was going to college, and about to take a final. Gibson said she was studying to do, "some kind of therapy for people injured in the war."
She will never fulfill that aspiration.
Police arrested Eduardo Arriola, 25, and filed charges for first degree murder. He lived above her, according to neighbors who heard the shots.
Arriola is being held without bail and will be in court Tuesday.
