Newspaper Subscription Salesman Is Fatally Shot : Santa Paula: Police still have no suspect and no apparent motive in the slaying of Eric Velasquez, 21, a Los Angeles Times employee.

A 21-year-old Ventura newspaper subscription salesman was fatally shot after leaving a friend’s apartment in Santa Paula early Monday, police said.

An unknown gunman standing in the parking lot felled Eric Velasquez with a single shot to the chest and Velasquez died at the scene, said Cmdr. Mark Hanson of the Santa Paula Police Department.

As of Monday, police still had no suspect and no apparent motive for the slaying. Family and friends of Velasquez described him as devoted to his family, his girlfriend, and his work as a subscription salesman for the Los Angeles Times.

“I think whoever did this is sure suffering in some way or another,” said Susan Ventura, Velasquez’s mother. “But it’s all over the city--not just in Los Angeles. They can’t control the guns.”

Many residents of the apartment complex said they were unaware of the incident until police or friends told them later in the morning.

But Bino Barretto, 25, whose unit adjoins the apartment parking lot, heard a strange noise outside after midnight. Walking out to the parking lot to see if someone had hit his car, he found Velasquez’s body lying in the carport and called police.

“It’s very strange around here,” Barretto said. “I’ve lived here almost a year, and it’s usually really peaceful around here.”

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Other witnesses at the small apartment complex said the gunman may have been a man who was involved in an argument with Velasquez earlier in the evening.

An 18-year-old woman who lives in the complex but would not give her name said Velasquez was visiting her brother, Raymond Baldonado, who lives in a nearby unit.

Baldonado and Velasquez came by her apartment earlier that evening, she said, and she saw Velasquez arguing with the friend of a man who lives in the apartment complex.

“Eric said something to one of them like, ‘You’re the punk that pulled a gun on me in Ventura,’ ” she said. “But the other guy said ‘No, you’ve got the wrong person, it wasn’t me.’ And then they shook hands.”

Velasquez’s girlfriend, Alicia Arreloa, 19, said she had heard Velasquez talk before of a man threatening him with a gun.

“About six months or so ago, this guy in Santa Paula got mad at him because he was driving too close to him, or something,” she said, adding that Velasquez had possibly encountered him once more since the incident. “Eric didn’t even know who he was.”

A student at UC Santa Barbara for one semester, Velasquez dropped out in January, 1992, because he and his family could no longer afford the tuition, his mother said.

Instead, he worked from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. every weekday night, walking door to door selling subscriptions to The Times. Most months, he was either the top salesman in the office or the second from the top, said Doug Menick, Velasquez’s immediate supervisor.

“He did a good enough job that he didn’t need to work more,” said Menick. “He was an excellent worker and did his job with pride.”

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Menick, and Velasquez’s other friends and relatives, said he was gregarious, outgoing and persuasive--the consummate salesman.

“He could sell you the shoes off your feet,” said his uncle, Andre Archuletta.

Velasquez, who lived with his parents to save money, baby-sat his 10-year-old brother in the afternoons and on the weekends drove to La Puente, where he had attended high school, to visit Arreloa. He was returning from La Puente Sunday when he stopped off in Santa Paula to see a friend and subsequently got shot, his mother said.

“Nothing stopped him from going to see (Arreloa),” Ventura said. “If he didn’t get a car, he would take the bus, he loved her so much.”