GoFundMe raises money for slain UNLV professor

An online fundraiser organized to help the family of slain UNLV professor Patricia Navarro Velez had raised more than $63,000 as of Friday night.

The money aims to offset memorial and travel arrangement costs, organizer Bryan Campbell wrote.

GoFundMe said it had verified the campaign.

“It’s with an extremely heavy heart for me to have to write this, but our CA family and Las Vegas community suffered a great loss yesterday and we are devastated and heartbroken,” Campbell wrote.

Navarro Velez, 39, was one of three professors fatally shot at UNLV Wednesday morning by a gunman who entered the Beam Hall building, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

The killer, Anthony Polito, 67, died in a shootout with university police.

Sheriff Kevin McMahill said Thursday that Polito had unsuccessfully applied to work at UNLV and other state universities.

The Clark County coroner’s office has also identified the two other professors who died in the shooting as Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, who taught at the university for more than two decades, and Naoko Takemaru, 69, an associate professor of Japanese studies.

Navarro Velez taught accounting information systems, specializing in cybersecurity and data analytics, according to her UNLV biography.

She was a mother of four, and a native of Puerto Rico.

“Your generosity will make a world of difference in efforts to support the family and their time of grieving,” Campbell wrote in Navarro Perez’s GoFundMe.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow @rickytwrites on Twitter.