SLAIN CSU STUDENT REMEMBERED
Family and friends remembered Savannah McNealy as talented and smart at a gathering Friday on the CSU campus. The senior was slain early Thursday.
Savannah McNealy was talented, smart and the type of student who made people want to work on college campuses.
Family and friends of the 22-year-old, as well as Colorado State University staff, gathered on campus Friday afternoon to honor McNealy, a CSU senior set to graduate in December. McNealy and Tristian Kemp, 26, of Destin, Fla., were fatally shot early Thursday morning after being dropped off by a ride share. Another woman was taken to the Medical Center of the Rockies for treatment and is expected to live.
“She made everyone around her feel loved,” McNealy’s bestfriend Chessa Hastings said. “She really gave a light to this world that will never be replaced… I’ll strive to be like her every day.”
The large group comforted each other and talked of McNealy. Photos of the young woman smiling and wearing CSU gear lined the vigil. People pinned green ribbons to their shirts, passed out candles and tissues, and wrote notes.
McNealy was the only person involved in the shooting who was affiliated with CSU. She was an art major and worked at the Rocky Mountain Student Media Corporation, which operates the Collegian newspaper.
“I don’t stand here with words that can make sense out of this,” university president Tony Frank said. “I don’t believe those words exist.”
Frank said he did not know McNealy personally, but spoke from a position of someone who similarly lost a person he loved from violence in college. “That pain you all feel, that emptiness that seems without limit, will recede,” Frank said. “What won’t recede is your memory of Savannah.”
McNealy was persistent, said Tony Milligan, vice president of external relations where McNealy interned. She sent seven emails so she could wrangle an internship. She was the spirit behind the creation of the Ram Walk, the orange stripe leading to the new oncampus football stadium.
The rideshare driver who dropped off McNealy, Kemp and the third victim had already driven away when the three were ambushed, Fort Collins Police Chief Terry Jones said.
The Larimer County Coroner identified the shooter as Michael A. Zamora, 30. He died from a single gunshot to the head that is believed to be self-inflicted. Zamora was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the base confirmed to Denver7.
“Right now we don’t know what the motive was,” Jones said. “We’re not ruling out a love triangle.”
The shooting happened just before 2 a.m. Thursday at 720 City Park Avenue, just west of CSU. Students told the Collegian on-campus newspaper they heard about 10 gunshots.
Police spokeswoman Kate Kimble said Zamora and the three victims socialized together in the hours before the shooting, but Zamora did not take a ride share with them. Police recovered two rifles and a handgun registered to Zamora at the scene.