Murder victims’ families come together to grieve

Anthony Barajas, who was fatally shot in 2021, and others honored with a candlelight vigil during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week

A woman whose son was fatally shot along with his date in a Corona movie theater in 2021 recalled Wednesday evening during a remembrance ceremony her family’s grief and urged other family members of crime victims to honor their memories.

Catherine Barajas spoke during the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office’s annual National Crime Victims’ Rights Week Candlelight Vigil in front of the Riverside County Historic Courthouse.

“The grieving that we do, that families do when they lose a loved one, is so often an intensely private and personal moment. When we think about our loved ones who are no longer with us, the grief can seem overwhelming,” District Attorney Mike Hestrin said. “Those private moments oftentimes can leave a victim’s family and loved ones feeling isolated, giving the impression that they’re alone in their grief and that nobody understands what they’re going through, such overwhelming loss, but today we come together to grieve publicly.”

Barajas was Wednesday’s featured speaker and was joined by family including her two daughters and her husband, Brian Barajas.

On July 26, 2021, Corona High graduate Rylee Goodrich, 18, and Mater Dei High graduate Anthony Barajas, 19, were watching the final moments of the last showing that night of “The Forever Purge” at the Regal Edwards Cinema at the Crossings at Corona when they were attacked.

Joseph Jimenez Jr., now 23, a Santiago High graduate who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, had run out of his medicine and failed to get it refilled. He had been hearing voices that were threatening to harm him, so he purchased a gun on Offerup. That night, he heard voices from “Abigail” and an unidentified, equally non-existent companion saying he was in danger from the Corona teens as they sat several rows in front of Jimenez and

three of his friends.

The six people were the only customers in the theater.

Jimenez went to his car and retrieved the gun. The three friends, unnerved by Jimenez, left the theater and

did not warn anyone.

Jimenez snuck up behind the teens and shot Barajas first, then Goodrich. She died that day and Barajas died on July 31, 2021, after donating organs.

PHOTOS BY MILKA SOKO Catherine Barajas, mother of Anthony Michael Barajas, who was shot to death in a Corona movie theater while watching a film in 2021, speaks with her husband Brian by her side at a candlelight vigil at Riverside County Historic Courthouse on Wednesday.

Maria Ortega holds a picture of her daughter, Charlene, who was a victim of crime on June 5, 2016, during a candlelight vigil.

Deputy DA Brittany Bulthuis, Elizabeth Ammann and Scott Mcintosh, aunt and uncle of Anthony Michael Barajas, listen to his mother speak during the vigil.