One of the University of Nevada Las Vegas professors killed in the mass shooting last week (Dec. 6) was a Bowling Green State University graduate.
Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, assistant professor in UNLV’s accounting department, is listed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal as one of the three faculty members killed in the rampage. Navarro Velez graduated from BGSU in 2008 with a Master of Accountancy degree.
She started working at UNLV in 2019 after earning her doctoral degree from the University of Central Florida.
According to the UNLV website, “Dr. Navarro Velez had devoted her career to educating the next generation of accountants,” primarily teaching accounting information systems.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to support the Navarro family. She is survived by her husband, four children, her parents, three sisters, a brother and many nieces and nephews.
Velez died when Anthony Polito, 67, entered the university’s Beam Hall and shot four people, three of whom died. The other two fatalities were also professors, Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, and Naoko Takemaru, 69.
The Review-Journal reported that according to Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, Polito was a former professor who had been denied positions at Nevada universities, was armed with a handgun when he came to the Las Vegas campus on Wednesday morning.
Polito was later killed in a shootout with UNLV police outside Beam Hall.
