In the spring of 1993, a wave of gang violence was crashing over Salt Lake City, Utah, and the family of Primitivo and Marcelina Padilla found themselves caught in its deadly undertow. Their son, Camillo Padilla, was one of seven children, a brother to Michael, Matthew, Ronnie, Lisa, Yvonne, and Anita. He was part of a family that would soon suffer a devastating and permanent loss, a wound that has remained open for decades.
The trouble began on the night of March 29, 1993. The Padilla home, located at 320 E. Cleveland Avenue in the south Central City neighborhood, was deliberately set on fire. Inside, ten people were asleep, including Camillo, four other adults, and five children all under the age of six. The family was startled awake by a barking dog and the smell of smoke, managing to escape the burning house just in time. All survived without physical injury, but the home sustained more than $5,000 in damages.
Investigators later determined that Elmer Candelario, accompanied by three other men, had doused the home with gasoline and ignited it with a match.
The motive for the arson, police believed, was rooted in a violent, escalating conflict between two of the state's largest gangs, QVO and the Eastside Gangsters. The feud had been ignited weeks earlier by the death of QVO leader Raoul "Speedy" Gonzales, Camillo's cousin. Though Gonzales's death on March 12 was officially ruled a suicide, his family and fellow gang members were convinced he had been murdered by a rival. In the chaotic aftermath, a leader of the Eastside Gangsters, whom QVO members blamed for Gonzales's death, had been staying at Camillo Padilla's home. The fire, it seemed, was an act of revenge.
Just two days after the family narrowly escaped the fire, the conflict returned to their doorstep with fatal consequences. On the evening of March 31, 1993, Camillo was outside his girlfriend's house with friends when a car sped by, its occupants shouting something from the windows. Sensing danger, Camillo went inside to get a gun. When the vehicle returned, a passenger in the front seat opened fire on the group in the driveway. Camillo fired back at the car, but he was struck by the gunfire. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries.
The Salt Lake City Police Department investigated the homicide, quickly concluding that it was connected to the same gang war that had led to the arson at Camillo's home. Detectives believed that Camillo Padilla was not the intended victim of the drive-by shooting. The target was likely the same Eastside Gangster leader who had been staying with him. In a tragic twist of fate, Camillo became another casualty in a war that was not his own, killed while defending himself and his friends from an attack meant for someone else.
In the months that followed, investigators made some progress on the initial crime. By June 1993, four men—Timmy Lee Martinez, Rito Jesus Guiterrez, Michael A. Gonzales, and Elmer Candelario—were charged with aggravated arson for the fire at the Padilla residence. However, the investigation into Camillo's murder stalled. The chain of violent events continued, with another shooting five days later and the retaliatory murder of another young man, Angel Martinez, the following year. But the case of the man killed in his driveway grew cold.
As of February 1995, the Deseret News reported that no one had ever been charged in connection with the death of Camillo Padilla. The men who set his family's home ablaze were identified, but his killer was not. For more than three decades, his murder has remained officially unsolved, a painful and unresolved chapter in his family's history and in the violent story of Salt Lake City's 1990s gang wars. The case remains open, waiting for someone to come forward with the information needed to finally bring justice to Camillo and his loved ones.
