BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Tuesday marked nine years since the death of 18-year-old Bianca Jackson, who was fatally shot at a party on California State University Bakersfield campus in 2010. To this day no arrest has been made in connection to the killing, and the Bakersfield Police Department considers it a cold case.
Jackson's best friend, Victor Donis, had to move away from Bakersfield because he no longer felt comfortable living in the city where his best friend was killed. He says this time of year is really tough.
“She was intelligent, funny, she was definitely a person where if you’re around her you’re going to be just, you feel so comfortable with her that you want to be her friend," he said.
Donis and Jackson met at Ridgeview Highschool, he says she brightened his life.
“It’s never a dull moment with her, we were always just laughing and talking about the randomest things," he said.
Those good times coming to an end on October 21st, 2010 -- when Donis invited Jackson to a Halloween party at CSUB. Donis says a fight broke out between about 5 or 6 people at some point during the party.
"It just didn't feel right so after that fight broke out everything continued as normal but there was tension in the air for sure," he said.
He eventually decided to leave the party with a group of friends. He asked Jackson if she wanted to go with, but she opted to stay back at the party, where a stray bullet would end her life.
Jackson was an innocent bystander caught in an alleged shootout between rival gang members, Donis said.
“I put the blame on me for having her be there. If it wasn’t for me telling her ‘hey we should go to this spot’ then she would have never been killed," Donis said.
To this day, Donis regrets not making Jackson leave. Bianca’s mom, Veronica Aguayo, also feels regret for allowing her to go to the party in the first place.
"It's hard because I can't even explain it to myself, why this happened. You just live with guilt and you live with a lot of what-ifs and you never have any...I don't feel like I'll ever have any peace because I don't feel I should have had to bury my child."
And Donis says he still has emotional scars because his best friend was ripped away from him.
“It definitely changed me as a person just because it's hard for me to trust or even have like a connection with someone like I had with her," he said.
