'Fun-Loving' Dad of 2 Was Fatally Shot While Attending Son’s Youth Football Game

Mar. 15, 2025

Terrance Patrick with his two young children.Photo:gofundme

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Thepop,pop,popof gunfire could be heard from where elementary students were warming up for a youth football game at a California high school.

Terrance Patrick was shot three times inside a car parked outside St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, Calif., where he had come to watch his 7-year-old son’s football game Oct. 5, Lieutenant Hugo Reynaga of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau confirms to PEOPLE.

Deputies who responded to the 8:20 a.m. Saturday shooting found the windshield of Patrick’s car riddled with bullets.

Terrance Patrick.gofundme

Reynaga says that the shooter – who a month later has not been apprehended – fired three shots, all of which hit Patrick. The 29-year-old father of two young children was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A woman inside the car with him was not injured.

In aninterviewwith Fox11, Mike Brown who coaches the NorthLong BeachPanthers 8-U team – made up of kids8 years old or younger– said he heard several gunshots as his players were warming up that morning.

“Pop, pop, pop,” Brown recalled. “At first we thought it was the balloons in the stands.”

Brown said Patrick’s son seemed unaware of what had transpired and was not pulled out of the game.

“The kid did finish the football game and all that,” Brown said. “I guess the mother didn’t want to give him all that information.”

Terrance Patrick at the beach with his children.gofundme

“This has rocked our family, leaving us with so much pain, grief, confusion, and so many unanswered questions,” he said. “We have no idea what could have motivated anyone to kill in such cold blood.”

Calling the murder “senseless,” the relative added: “His death has left a mother and father without their son, siblings without their brother, and most tragic of all, two young children without a loving dad to raise them.”

Reynaga tells PEOPLE there was no recorded or witnessed altercation precipitating the shooting and that authorities are “pursuing at least two suspects” in the case.

While investigators have not released a motive in the case, the lieutenant says that the car Patrick was in at the time of the shooting had been reported stolen.

source: people.com