Cindy Del Carmen Villalba came home Thursday after six weeks in Costa Rica, dropped her bags at her parents' apartment, caught up with her brother and sister, and went for a drive with her best friend.
Within an hour Villalba, a senior at Rutgers University, was dead. The police said she was shot by three robbers as she and her friend sat talking in a parked car in Paterson, N.J. On Saturday, the police arrested three teens and charged them with murder and robbery.Villalba's friend, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the men approached her car and asked for money before one stuck a gun through the window, which had been rolled down to make up for a lack of air conditioning.
"The guy had a gun to my head," the friend said in an interview on Saturday. "The next thing I know, it went off. I thought I was dead. I have no idea how it missed me. I felt the vibrations.
"It all happened so fast," she continued. "I looked at Cindy, and she said, `Oh.' And that's when I realized it had hit her. I kept saying, `Please don't leave me.' I don't know how I drove her to the hospital, but I did. She was still breathing when I got there."
Villalba was pronounced dead at Barnert Hospital.
Police said the three suspects were identified by fingerprints they left on the car.
Villalba would have celebrated her 21st birthday on Wednesday.