SEATTLE — The last time Geoffrey Gaetz saw Josilyn Ruiz, he helped her run through a checklist of things she needed to bring to an upcoming electronic dance music festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre. Lantern, check. Stove, check. Table, check.
That weekend, on June 17, Ruiz and her fiancée, Brandy Escamilla, 26 and 29 respectively, were gunned down at the campground during the Beyond Wonderland festival at the Central Washington venue.
Gaetz worked with Ruiz for over a year as pain clinic nurses. When he returned to work the next week, his supervisor told him Ruiz and Escamilla had been killed.
“It didn’t seem real,” he said Monday evening during a vigil for the two women at Cal Anderson Park on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. “It seemed like somebody had made a mistake. It couldn’t be them.”
Dozens of people gathered at the park’s Lincoln Reservoir to remember the young couple. Vigil attendees lit candles in the victims’ memories, wrote messages of love and healing in chalk, and left “kandi” — beaded bracelets often traded between people at raves — on the ground.
Three others were injured in the shooting, including a 31-year-old from Eugene, Ore., and the alleged shooter’s girlfriend, a 20-year-old from Mill Creek who remained at Harborview Medical Center on Tuesday. A 61-year-old employee was also bruised and cut when a bullet shattered her glasses.
Prosecutors have charged James M. Kelly, 26, with killing the two women and injuring the three people. Kelly, an active member of the U.S. Army at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, told detectives he took a dose of psychedelic mushrooms that caused him to hallucinate, according to probable cause documents.
“As [the suspect’s] hallucination ‘trip’ got going, he began to believe that the world was ending and that he needed to return to his camp immediately with [his girlfriend],” documents say. At their campsite, the suspect grabbed a handgun from their truck, loaded a magazine and chambered a cartridge, documents say.
Some states, including Oregon and Colorado, have legalized psilocybin use with some restrictions. One study suggests psilocybin use is associated with low odds of violent and aggressive behavior. A forensic psychiatrist notes the effects of psychedelics are “dose dependent and difficult to predict,” with recent research bolstering the claim that psychedelics are generally not linked to violent crime.
Research indicates psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy can treat depression, anxiety and addiction.
Kelly faces two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault and one count of first-degree domestic violence assault.
Lauren Davidson, who organized the vigil, had stayed at the same camp as Ruiz and Escamilla. As she waited outside her campground that Saturday night into the early morning hours, she wondered what had happened.
In the days that followed, 32-year-old Davidson learned about the young couple’s plans for marriage and devotion to others. In Discord and Facebook groups for Beyond Wonderland festivalgoers, Davidson saw vigils planned in Portland and Tacoma and set her mind on putting one together in Seattle.
“I decided to do it at a park I grew up at, the day after the Pride [Parade], too, since the ladies were a queer couple, and Cal Anderson is a kind of beacon for the gay community,” Davidson said. Cal Anderson Park is named after Washington’s first openly gay state legislator.
A community’s fear
Vigil attendees, many of whom were at the festival or frequent EDM concerts, mourned the loss of life — and the loss of a sense of safety at venues.
Alexander Fisk is the founder of Save the Rave, an organization advocating for increased security against weapons at raves and education about harm-reduction tools, like Narcan and fentanyl test strips.
“This isn’t a drug problem,” Fisk said. “This is, there was a gun in a spot where there wasn’t supposed to be a gun.”
The Gorge Amphitheatre website states the venue “does not allow firearms or weapons of any description” in the venue or on campgrounds.
Rikki Jenkins and Stephen Cobb worked Beyond Wonderland and came to the vigil with their friend, Michelle Bothwell, who was at the festival with her kids and husband.
“I’ve worked a lot of festivals at the Gorge,” Jenkins said. “To have something like that happen, that was very scary.” Jenkins called Bothwell to tell her there was an active shooter.
Jenkins said she still has questions about how a gun was able to get into the venue, and said she is concerned about how easy it is for anyone to get into the campgrounds.
“We came to [the vigil] to show support for our community, because it hurts,” she said. “Things are going to change.”
High school sweethearts
The two women who died were high school sweethearts from the greater Los Angeles area. They had plans to get married in Greece and had scheduled a trip in October to scout a wedding venue.
Gaetz’s partner, Kate McCoshen, described Escamilla’s energy as “infectious.”
“The first time that I met her I was like, ‘I need to know everything about this person. They are so funny,’” McCoshen said, remembering the times they met their partner and his colleagues for drinks.
Gaetz said the couple made an amazing team, and Ruiz talked about Escamilla constantly.
Ruiz was a quiet and timid colleague at first, Gaetz said, but opened up quickly. Every week, they would gather around the nurses station and recap the latest episode of HBO’s “The White Lotus” or “The Last of Us.” He watched his colleague take up acting classes again, something she had left behind after high school, and helped her run lines.
“[Ruiz] cared about people,” Gaetz said. “She took genuine time to sit down and listen to people and make them feel heard.”
During their last shift together, Gaetz and Ruiz looked at houses together, whiling away the time before they had to clock out. Scrolling through residences “so far out” of their price ranges, Ruiz talked about all the things she and Escamilla wanted in their future home.
“They were each other’s people,” McCoshen said. “You don’t see a lot of people like that.”
