News & Events
Posthumous Degree for City Tech Student Who Lost His Life in a Senseless Act of Street Violence
José Liz, 22, a City Tech senior in the graphic arts program was “living the American dream and determined to steer clear of trouble,” according to friends and classmates who knew him well. “He had a knack for bringing people together and making good things happen. He also worked full time to support his mother, brother and sister and was known in his Corona/Queen neighborhood as a ‘peacemaker.’”
Liz, and his best buddy Alexis Fermin, 23, a recent accounting-school graduate who paid his rent and tuition by working as a mechanic, got word on the early morning of Saturday, March 12, 2005, that another friend was “embroiled in an angry dispute with a gang of punks outside a Corona catering hall,” according to a New York Post account by Marsha Kranes and Jennifer Fermino. The two, both the sons of Dominican immigrants, raced to help their friend out, when, tragically, trouble found them and both were killed in a senseless act of street violence. Four men were charged at the time with gang assault, according to media reports, and two young men were later arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
“Everyone is totally distraught,” said Liz’s classmate Amritpal Minhas, 22, also a graphic arts major. “No one can make sense out of it. Nobody is thinking straight. We’re not believing it actually happened.”
Graphic Arts Professor Don Carli spoke of Liz as a promising young man with “one foot in his old neighborhood and one foot in a very promising future. He had poise, smarts and leadership ability that inspired other kids to do their best.”
Liz worked as an account manager with ADT Security Systems in Long Island City and regularly won “special trips for excelling in sales,” according to ADT’s Human Resources Coordinator Rachael Bhola. “He brought so much joy to the office. We’re all in mourning, trying to keep it together.”
A joint wake was held for Liz and Fermin, followed by a funeral Mass at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Elmhurst/Queens and side-by-side burial in Woodside’s Calvary Cemetery on March 16. The College awarded Liz a posthumous baccalaureate degree at Commencement Exercises in June, and his classmates are planning an event for later this year to launch a scholarship fund in his memory. “They want to honor him and help his family understand that he didn’t live or die for nothing,” Professor Carli added.
06/17/05
