As the UC Davis community grapples with the deaths of three of its own in a traffic collision last week, the students’ lives are coming into focus.
Minkyu Geon of Hong Kong was a junior majoring in electrical engineering and had been an undergraduate assistant in the Integration Engineering Laboratory, university officials said Tuesday. The lab focuses on the study of intelligent robotics and mechatronics.
Codi Orland Mateo of Pasco, Washington, was a senior majoring in neurobiology, physiology and behavior, university officials announced.
Margarette Guinto Ventura of Virginia Beach, Virginia, was a sophomore majoring in biological sciences, who, friends said, was an intern at the Bayanihan Clinic in Rancho Cordova, helping to provide medical care to underserved communities.
The student-run Bayanihan Clinic on Explorer Drive provides free medical care to the area’s Filipino immigrant community and other underserved communities along with outreach to Filipino-American military veterans. Many of the staffers come from UC Davis’ ranks, including undergrads like sophomore Ventura and UC Davis medical and physician’s assistant students.
Mateo studied neurobiology, the pre-health program that gives students, in the course catalog’s words, the tools “to develop solutions that will help humans and animals lead healthy lives.”
But at Pasco, Washington’s Chiawana High School, Mateo was a beloved member of his school’s wind ensemble, marching and jazz bands. Mateo, a 2021 graduate, played euphonium and bass, and was, in words posted on the high school band’s Facebook page, “one of the coolest kids you’ll ever meet.”
Geon and Mateo lived in Shasta Hall. Ventura lived in the campus’ Laben Hall and was a member of Girl Gains, a recreational weightlifting organization on campus. Mateo also participated in the Filipinx Association for Health Careers, also a student organization.
“We are absolutely devastated and struggling to come to terms with such immense loss,” University of California, Davis Chancellor Gary S. May said in an earlier statement. “On behalf of the UC Davis community, we send our condolences to the family, friends and others who knew and loved them. Our Aggie family shares deeply in your pain and loss.”
The university has contacted the students’ families to offer help and are directing fellow students to the campus’ Student Health and Counseling Services. These postvention services, as they are known, focus attention on families who have lost loved ones.
Campus representatives will meet with grieving family members, offering help with memorial services, arranging campus visits or posthumous recognition of their student’s academic achievement, said Paul Kim, the university’s director or counseling services.
For students and others in the campus community, counselors are at the ready along with crisis consultation services including a 24-hour text line. A list of available services can be found on the Aggie Mental Health website.
With sudden tragedies such as Friday’s, students experience “a range of emotions and impacts,” Kim said. “There are a range of resources we provide and we stand ready to provide them.”
California Highway Patrol officials summarized the harrowing scene that led to tragedy. The students’ car was struck by a wrong-way driver and two other vehicles on Highway 99 north of Lathrop Road in San Joaquin County a little after midnight Friday. The students’ vehicle then slammed into a concrete divider.
The students and the wrong-way driver, identified only as a 32-year-old Stockton man, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Alcohol was a factor in the collision. Both the wrong-way driver and another motorist who was taken to San Joaquin General Hospital with major injuries were suspected to have been under the influence of alcohol, the CHP said.
The wrong-way driver collided with the students’ car on northbound Highway 99 north of Lathrop Road about 12:30 a.m. Friday, officials from the CHP’s Stockton office said. Patrol officers said the car was driving south on the northbound side of the highway, its headlights damaged from an earlier collision, when it slammed into the students’ vehicle.
The force of the collision sent the students’ car into the path of a third vehicle also going north. The driver of that third car collided with the students’ car, pushing it into the path of a fourth car. The driver of the fourth car, identified by the CHP as Nicholas Craggs, 40, of Stockton, was also suspected to be driving under the influence.
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