Homicide victim had ‘great heart’
SAN JOSE — A 19year-old San Jose man found shot to death over the weekend at Toyon Elementary School is being remembered as a standout football player with a “great heart.”
Officers discovered the body of Joseph “Smiley” Viramontes on the 900 block of Bard Street at 10:17 a.m. Saturday after receiving a report of a person down not breathing with visible injuries.
Viramontes was pronounced dead at the scene.
The death was not immediately reported as a homicide, but it is now being treated as such, police said Tuesday. It marks the seventh homicide of the year in San Jose. At the same point last year, which saw the city’s 25year high, the city had recorded 10 homicides.
No suspects have been arrested or identified, and “the motive or circumstances surrounding the death are unknown at this time,” said San Jose police Officer Albert Morales.
Viramontes played with the San Jose 49ers, the now-defunct youth football team said in a post on its Facebook page.
“Smiley paved the way as a great football player for our team while our group was up and running,” the team said. “The world will never be the same without you here, but we will always remember your wonderful face.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise $10,000 for Viramontes’ grandfather, who raised him.
Angel Barragan, the organizer of the fundraiser, coached Viramontes for almost five seasons with the San Jose 49ers.
“He was a very respectful young man,” Barragan said in an email Wednesday. “Quiet. Not the biggest person in size, but his heart was just as big as anyone’s. He never gave up.”
Viramontes earned the nickname Smiley because “he was smiling all the time,” another coach, Scott Silver, told NBC Bay Area.
Barragan said he believed Viramontes fell in with the “wrong crowd” when he got too old to play youth football. The charter high school he attended didn’t have a football team.
Still, Viramontes’ slaying left Barragan puzzled.
“Why someone would shoot him, I can’t even imagine. But I do believe he wasn’t motivated to be better any longer,” said Barragan, adding that he lost touch with Viramontes but occasionally saw him. “He didn’t look like he had a plan. A plan for life.”
A celebration of life is scheduled to take place from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday at Green Valley Christian Church, 390 Ridgevista Ave., in San Jose. Funeral services will follow at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the church.
Anyone with information about the case can contact San Jose homicide detectives at 408-277-5283 or Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-STOP or svcrimestoppers.org.