Background: The Red West Pizza restaurant in Wilmington, Los Angeles, on May 9, 2026 (KNBC/YouTube). Inset: Andres Castellas (GoFundMe).
When two women began fighting at a popular California pizza shop, a man went to intervene and was shot and killed for his efforts, authorities say.
Andres Castellas, 26, was killed on Saturday as he was celebrating his birthday, a GoFundMe set up for his family stated.
The suspect is still on the loose, according to local ABC affiliate KABC.
Castellas was with his loved ones on Saturday at Red West Pizza restaurant in Wilmington, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. He was turning 26, was a father, and according to the fundraiser, "surrounded by love and happiness" when everything changed.
Two women were fighting when Castellas tried to break them up, Los Angeles police said. As he did so, a man fired a gun, striking Castellas and a restaurant employee in his 20s.
The restaurant employee was taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. Castellas, however, was pronounced dead at the scene.
"What makes this loss even harder is that Andres was innocent," the fundraiser says. "He did not deserve for his life to be taken away so tragically. A moment that should have been filled with memories and joy became a heartbreaking tragedy no one could have imagined."
The shooter ran away after he fired his gun. Police described him as a Hispanic man around 20 to 25 years old.
One local resident expressed how the restaurant is a staple for the community and that the shooting has frightened her.
"There's a lot of kids there all the time, like it's kids there all the time, and it's scary to see that — when you can have a family moment, something like this can happen," a resident who said she lives around the corner from the establishment told KNBC.
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