Trevor Irby, 25, was one of three people killed during a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday, the last night of a three-day family-friendly event.
A recent transplant to Santa Cruz, Irby grew up in Romulus in upstate New York. He played sports and had a lot of friends, said his grandmother, Juanita Walborn.
“He was a wonderful kid. Everybody liked him,” she told KQED by phone on Tuesday. “He was larger than life. His smile would just melt ya. He was really a good kid.”
Irby, who graduated from Keuka College in 2017 with a degree in biology, had recently moved to California with his girlfriend, Sarah Warner, a Keuka graduate who wasn’t injured in the attack. Irby was working with the elderly, Walborn said, and planned to return to New York in August to finish his schooling to become a doctor’s assistant.
“He loved it. He had one old lady who was 102 years old and she just adored Trevor,” she said, adding that the woman gave him a teddy bear.
Walborn said her grandson was there for her when her husband died in June.
“Every night, Trevor called me. I mean, every night,” she said through tears. “’I love you grandma,’ and I’d say, ‘I love you, too.’ ”
Walborn said they last spoke on Sunday, before Irby left to attend the Garlic Festival, which he had told her about. He told her that he loved her, she said.
Irby’s mother, Tammy Williams, said that was similar to the last conversation she had with her son.
“The last thing I said to Trevor was, ‘Trevor, I love you,'” she told ABC 7. “He said, ‘Mom, I love you. I’m having a good time, I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Well, my call tomorrow never came. That call for me was getting in the plane to bring him home and bury him.”
Williams said her son was apparently shot at close range.
“His goal in life was he was actually going to school to help people for this,” she told ABC. “And that someone like that shot my son, I just. … I thought I was instantly just going to die.”
His father, Terry Williams, said he was his best friend and the perfect son.
“He’s the type that would do anything for anybody, that’s how he was,” said Walborn. “If you met Trevor, you had a friend for life.”
Some of Irby’s friends have set up a GoFundMe fundraising website in his memory. On the site, they wrote about an “inseparable bond” developed during college. “As seniors, we lived together and created countless memories that we hold close to our hearts,” they wrote.
They described Irby as a brother, a son, a grandson, a boyfriend, a best friend and a “bright light to all who knew him.”
“Trevor was an excellent pillar of the Keuka College & Romulus communities and a kind & positive soul,” his friends wrote on the site. “Trevor will forever live on in the memory of his loved ones.”
Matt Hey, one of Irby’s college roommates, told the San Francisco Chronicle: “He just had that vibe that you could connect to him.”
Irby was a 2012 graduate of Romulus Central School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society, a three-sport athlete and prom king, according to CNY Central.
“He was a great friend,” Romulus Central School Superintendent Marty Rotz told CNY Central. “Never mean, never malicious, always caring. His smile, his laugh, you can still hear him. And if you knew him, you’d never forget him.”
Keuka College said it would organize a vigil for Trevor when the time was appropriate.
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