SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Luis Sepulveda’s friends remember the 21-year-old man who was “executed” in his apartment during a robbery as a kind and passionate person.
“We want people to remember him for who he was, not how he died,” said Rachel Bisgrove, one of Sepulveda’s close friends.
As they wait for the trial of the people accused of killing Sepulveda, his friends gathered to talk about him and share stories about him with Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.
Sepulveda loved his family and was particularly close with mother and sister, they said. He went out of his way to make people laugh.
He had a small group of friends who were like brothers to him. They shared a passion for video games and sports, the friends said.
He dreamed of being successful, even if he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do, he knew he was going to do something great, his friends said.
The details of Sepulveda’s murder last summer in Eastwood are hard for his friends and family to hear, and even harder for them to understand.
“It’s surreal,” said one of Sepulveda’s friends, Trevor Thomas. “Unbelievable.”
Trevor Thomas and Rachel Bisgrove remember their friend, Luis Sepulveda, who was fatally shot last summer in Eastwood as a kind and passionate person.. (Sarah Moses Buckshot | sbuckshot@syracuse.com)
Treamon Elmore, 25, and his sister, Jazzmin, 27, are accused of participating in an attack that killed Sepulveda and Christopher McLaurin, 28, on June 20, 2018 in Sepulveda’s home on Lynwood Avenue.
Treamon Elmore is accused of being inside the Lynwood Avenue residence, where the two men were “executed,” prosecutors have said. Jazzmin Elmore is accused of helping set up the robbery that led to the fatal shootings. It has not yet been revealed why the Elmores robbed the victims.
The Elmores’ trial was recently pushed back by four months by a judge. It was supposed to be held in May.
Bisgrove said she met Sepulveda through her boyfriend, Ian Covich, who is close friends with Sepulveda. It was Sepulveda’s 18th birthday.
“From that day forward, I never missed a day with him,” she said. The two became fast friends and loved each other like siblings, she said.
Bisgrove said that Sepulveda was an amazing friend.
“He did everything he could to make everyone around him happy,” she said. “He would literally give you the shirt of his back. He would give you his last dollar. It didn’t matter as long as you were happy. He was the best person that I’ve ever met in my life.”
Bisgrove said Sepulveda was also an uplifting person.
“There was no time for negativity,” she said. “He was always positive.”
Thomas said he met Sepulveda in elementary school and they graduated from Henninger High School together in 2015.
The two have been playing video games together since sixth grade.
“We both played Xbox Live,” Thomas said. “We would stay up all night just playing and talking on Xbox Live.”
As adults, the men stayed closed friends, still playing video games, but also talking a lot about life and goals for the future.
When Thomas and Bisgrove found out that their friend — a man who had big dreams and was never in trouble in the past — was murdered, they couldn’t believe it.
“I can’t believe how much of shock it was,” Bisgrove said. “He was not a person you would have thought this would ever happen to. He was such a good person.”
That’s what Bisgrove said Sepulveda’s family wants the public to know. Sepulveda is the son of Jorge and Linda Sepulveda.
“He was a good person,” Bisgrove said. “We want people to know how special he was. We want him to be remembered for who he was, not what happened to him.”
Luis Sepulveda, 21, loved his family and friends and would do anything to make them happy. He was murdered in June 2018.
Siblings’ trial in double Syracuse ‘execution’ delayed
Treamon and Jazzmin Elmore are accused — with their younger brother — of the murders of two Eastwood men during a June 2018 robbery.
