Andrew Andy Lopez

Andrew “Andy” Lopez was a 13-year-old student in Santa Rosa who, by all accounts recorded in public accounts, loved the ordinary things of early adolescence and was known locally as a boy who belonged to his neighborhood. He was an eighth-grader who had recently transferred to a new middle school. Family and community responses after his death — including a Spanish-language Mass at Resurrection Parish and a funeral that drew hundreds — show he was surrounded by relatives, friends, classmates and neighbors who cared for him.

News coverage from local outlets described Andy as a young person whose life was still unfolding: a child moving between school, friends and family, carrying the small freedoms of a teenager in his neighborhood. The large attendance at his services and the public demonstrations that followed his death reflect the deep affection and concern his community felt for him and for the family he left behind.

In the years after October 2013, Andy’s name remained present in community conversations about safety, policing, and youth. His family pursued civil remedies, and in December 2018 Sonoma County settled the federal lawsuit with his family. Community groups and local journalists continued to remember Andy while also using his memory to call for changes intended to prevent future tragedies.

Public documents and reporting make clear that many people — family members, classmates, neighbors, faith communities and wider civic groups — mourned Andy and sought to honor him in the aftermath. While public records focus on the circumstances surrounding his death and the legal aftermath, those same records also show a community that gathered to grieve a son and a boy whose life mattered to those who knew him.

Because formal, family-published obituary notices that match the exact death date were not found in the available public obituary or funeral-home repositories, this life story draws on contemporaneous local news coverage, court records, and community reporting to offer a respectful remembrance of Andrew “Andy” Lopez as a child whose presence mattered to family and neighborhood — and whose loss was deeply felt.