Two men have been charged with murder in the shooting death of Jonathan Krueger, a 22-year-old University of Kentucky student. Efrain Diaz, 20, and Justin D. Smith, 18, were charged in connection with Krueger's death after he was found with a gunshot wound to the chest on a street near the UK campus. Krueger was a well-liked student and worked as the photo editor for the campus newspaper. Police continue to investigate and search for others who may have been involved in the homicide.
“Wheel Tracks” is the official monthly publication for Vermont Automobile Enthusiasts (VAE) by the VAAS. Wheel Tracks is a monthly newsletter published in print and electronically for the public and it’s membership in ten states and two provinces. The newsletter began in May 1953.
antiques, automobile, automotive, autos, car, classic, collectibles, vermont, vt
How Celtra Optimizes its Advertising Platform with DatabricksGrega Kespret
Leading brands such as Pepsi and Macy’s use Celtra’s technology platform for brand advertising. To inform better product design and resolve issues faster, Celtra relies on Databricks to gather insights from large-scale, diverse, and complex raw event data. Learn how Celtra uses Databricks to simplify their Spark deployment, achieve faster project turnaround time, and empower people to make data-driven decisions.
In this webinar, you will learn how Databricks helps Celtra to:
- Utilize Apache Spark to power their production analytics pipeline.
- Build a “Just-in-Time” data warehouse to analyze diverse data sources such as Elastic Load Balancer access logs, raw tracking events, operational data, and reportable metrics.
- Go beyond simple counting and group events into sequences (i.e., sessionization) and perform more complex analysis such as funnel analytics.
2. A2 APRIL, W1715 FROMTHE FRONT PAGE LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER | KENTUCKY.COM
candlelight vigil Friday night
at UK’s Newman Center to
remember Krueger. Friends
greeted each other with hugs
and backslaps in the lobby
as a bell tolled somberly out-
side.
At the start of the service,
Kristina Alexander, sweet-
heart of the Epsilon Omicron
Chapter of Beta Theta Pi,
read a Henry Scott Holland
poem. It began:
“Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped into
the next room...
Whatever we were to each
other
That we still are....”
Matt Dampier, pastor of
Christian Student Fellow-
ship, took note of the many
people who attended,
“One of the ways you
measure a life is the ripples
it leaves behind,” Dampier
said.
Five days before his death,
Krueger turned 22. He posted
on Facebook, “Thank you to
everyone who wished me a
Happy Birthday today, I can’t
believe I’m 22 already! Look-
ing ahead there’s so much to
be happy about and if this
next year is anything like this
last year, then it will be an-
other one to remember!”
Krueger was the photo ed-
itor for the UK student news-
paper, the Kentucky Kernel,
and was set to be the paper’s
ad manager in the fall.
“He would always go
above and beyond,” said Mor-
gan Eads, the paper’s editor.
“We always called him the
annoying little brother. He
was always joking around.”
“Jonathan covered all the
basketball tournaments this
year and had a great time,”
said Chris Poore, Krueger’s
adviser at the Kernel. “He
did really good work. It’s a
hard environment, especially
for a student who’s doing it
for the first time.”
In comments to the Ker-
nel, mother Mary Krueger
said her son loved working
for the paper.
“I opened up the paper this
morning and saw he had one
last picture in. He loved what
he did down there, and I know
it was a big part of his life.”
Jonathan Krueger was
proud of his Kernel work,
“but he was also proud of his
family,” Poore said. Krueger
was from Perrysburg, Ohio,
a small town near Toledo,
where his father ran a large
greenhouse.
In high school, Krueger
was a varsity basketball play-
er for Maumee Valley Coun-
try Day School.
“This is such a tragedy,”
Gary Boehm, head of the
school, said in an interview
with Mike Sigov at The
Blade newspaper in Toledo.
“Everybody loved Jonathan ...
Jonathan was a very friendly,
outgoing, happy person. He
was a strong student, a ter-
rific athlete, and a very good
teammate.”
At UK, Krueger was a ju-
nior in the College of Com-
munications and Information.
He was majoring in Integrat-
ed Strategic Communication
and was working on minors
in economics and digital me-
dia and design.
“I really appreciated him
for being such a great listen-
er and having such a great at-
titude,” said David Stephen-
son, a UK instructor who
recently had Krueger in his
multimedia class and worked
with him at the Kernel.
Stephenson described
Krueger as the perfect stu-
dent: talented, happy, eager,
and smart. “Clearly, I will
miss him,” he said.
Krueger studied abroad in
London and Dublin over win-
ter break as part of a class
about branding and promo-
tion of sports.
“He was brilliant and de-
lightful and creative and be-
loved by his 29 travel peers,”
said Kakie Urch, one of the
two UK professors who
taught the course. A sports
fan, Krueger was able to visit
Chelsea Football Club and
Wimbledon, Urch said.
“He wrote a brilliant final
paper about the history of
Wimbledon for the class in
which he demonstrated the
subtlety of the branding of
Wimbledon,” Urch said.
Krueger was “absolutely a
person that anyone would be
proud to have as a son,” Urch
said.
Krueger was also a mem-
ber of the Epsilon Omnicron
chapter of Beta Theta Pi.
The fraternity posted a state-
ment to Facebook.
“Jonathan was an active
Beta during his tenure in the
Epsilon Omicron Chapter and
had a way of putting a smile
on everyone’s face, every sin-
gle day,” the statement said.
“Jonathan could be found
pursuing his dreams outside
of Beta on the sidelines of a
number of University of Ken-
tucky sports. His passion for
photography and athletics
was great; his love for people
was even greater.
“His passing comes as
an incredible loss to all who
knew him and to our univer-
sity as a whole. The outreach
we’ve witnessed from this
campus and community is
heartwarming, a true testa-
ment to the amazing sup-
port system we have at this
university. We ask that you
continue to keep Jonathan’s
family and friends in your
thoughts and prayers as we
celebrate his life and honor
his great legacy.”
events will be streamed on
StarWars.com in a partner-
ship with Verizon. A droid
demolition derby, a guy who
carves Star Wars characters
out of vegetables, a session
with Princess Leia, aka Car-
rie Fisher — it is all happen-
ing here. “Just being around
my fellow fans makes me feel
comfortable in my own skin,”
said Nitzan Harel, who was
dressed as the Jedi character
Master Secura, replete with
blue face paint and droopy
turquoise “brain tails.”
A giant marketing stunt
in galactic clothing? Sure.
Lucasfilm wants to rally the
faithful before the December
release of Star Wars: Epi-
sode VII — The Force Awak-
ens. Disney, which bought
Lucasfilm for $4 billion in
2012, is also promoting Star
Wars Rebels, an animated
series shown on Disney XD,
its cable network for boys.
Moreover, Disney wants to
prove to fans, many of whom
had mixed feelings about its
purchase of Lucasfilm, that
their beloved Star Wars is in
capable hands.
But the trick is to make
fans feel tended to rather
than managed, and Lucasfilm
pulls that off with year-round
tactics that many rival stu-
dios have not quite commit-
ted to. “You can’t fake it,”
said Mary Franklin, who has
led Lucasfilm’s fan efforts
since 2010.
For instance, Lucasfilm
has a long history of pluck-
ing employees from the fan
ranks. Franklin was recruited
after the studio noticed an
online Star Wars fan club
she created while living in
Cordova, Alaska. Matt Mar-
tin, Lucasfilm’s manager of
digital content and commu-
nity relations, started at the
company in 2002 as a volun-
teer at Comic-Con Interna-
tional, the annual pop culture
convention in San Diego.
Kennedy, who took over
Lucasfilm from George Lucas
in 2012, hired fans to work in
the “creature department” of
“The Force Awakens” after
attending the last Celebra-
tion, which was held in Ger-
many in 2013. “It was literal-
ly jaw-dropping,” she said in
an interview, speaking of an
exhibit of fan-constructed R2-
D2s. Hiring amateur droid
builders not only makes the
community feel valued, she
said, but “it brought authen-
ticity” to the film.
Lucasfilm also stands
apart when it comes to fan
monitoring and responsive-
ness. Franklin and a dozen
other staff members answer
fan email, Twitter posts and
Facebook messages “con-
stantly, all day,” Martin said.
“I know the hardest core of
the hard core, and I try to
respond to those people im-
mediately,” he added, noting
that some have his personal
contact information. “But we
try really hard to answer ab-
solutely everything.”
Fan mail has mostly gone
digital. If studios do still re-
spond to old-fashioned let-
ters — some just dump them
in the trash — the senders
typically receive a form-letter
response. But not at Lucas-
film. Consider its reply to a
recent message from 7-year-
old Colin Gilpatric.
Colin, who has autism,
was disturbed to read in a
Star Wars book that Jedi
Knights are not supposed to
marry. That policy needed
to change, he decided. With
the help of his mother, Peggy
Gilpatric, he mailed a letter
to Lucasfilm saying as much.
“To our complete shock,
we got a response,” Gilpatric
said. The response, written
as a Jedi would speak, told
Colin that Jedis could marry
in some instances.
“For them to give him that
little piece of magic will make
our entire family forever loy-
al,” Gilpatric said, noting with
a laugh that Colin began ask-
ing so many girls in his class
to marry him that a teacher
sent a concerned note home.
In some ways, Lucasfilm’s
approach may be impossible
for other studios to replicate.
With the Indiana Jones fran-
chise in hibernation, Lucasfilm
has only one brand to worry
about. Lucas also ran the stu-
dio like a mom-and-pop opera-
tion: If he wanted a robust fan
department, he simply devot-
ed the funds. Most studios do
not work that way.
Star Wars is also a unique
movie property, set in a
world that captivates people
with its specific creatures,
vehicles, linguistics and plan-
ets while also providing a
wide enough canvas to allow
followers to let their imagina-
tions run wild.
Steve Sansweet, who re-
tired as Lucasfilm’s head of
fan relations in 2010, noted
that companies often get in
their own way. “Not only was
I saying to fans, ‘OK, this
is what you need to know
about working with a com-
pany,’ I was explaining back
to Lucasfilm why what they
were doing was not a bad
thing but an amazing thing,”
Sansweet said.
From Page A1
STAR WARS
robbery.
Asked if he killed Krueger,
Smith said, “No. Hell no,”
while he was taken Friday
night from the police depart-
ment to a waiting police car.
Investigators said they
don’t think there was a previ-
ous link between Smith and
Krueger, Barnard said. But
police are looking into the
possibility of a previous alter-
cation between them.
“We’ve updated the family
on our investigation, and our
thoughts and prayers are with
them,” Barnard said. In their
conversation about Krueger’s
death, the father was “very
upset, and understandably
so,” Barnard added.
“I don’t think there is any-
thing really that I can ever
say to a family or victim that
will ever make them whole
again after something like
this. … It’s very difficult for
families,” Barnard said.
Krueger was shot during
a robbery about 2 a.m. as he
was walking with another
person on East Maxwell near
Transylvania Park, police said.
He died a little while later at
UK Chandler Hospital.
Police found a vehicle
that they think is the same
one seen leaving after the
shooting, Barnard said. The
discovery of that vehicle led
to Smith, he said. Barnard
said officers found Smith at a
house in Lexington on Friday
morning and brought him to
headquarters for questioning.
Police Lt. Clay Combs
described an attempted traf-
fic stop and a brief standoff
about 6:30 a.m. at a house in
the 2300 block of Le Havre
Road, off Bordeaux Drive
near Versailles Road. A man
at the Le Havre Road house
declined requests for com-
ment Friday.
UK President Eli Capil-
outo said Krueger was walk-
ing home when the attack
occurred.
In a statement sent to stu-
dents, faculty and staff, Capi-
louto said, “Although this
tragedy occurred off campus,
it is a stark reminder that all
members of our campus com-
munity should at all times be
vigilant about their safety,
and the safety of others. We
are each other’s keeper.”
Although police haven’t
identified the man who was
walking with Krueger, a resi-
dent of the area who helped
Krueger’s friend said he was
a fraternity brother in the
Epsilon Omnicron chapter of
Beta Theta Pi.
Thomas O’Mara, who lives
near the intersection of Tran-
sylvania Park and East Max-
well Street, said he heard two
to three gunshots followed by
a pause and then four to five
more. O’Mara and his house-
mates first thought they were
hearing fireworks.
Then they saw the man
they later found out was
walking with Krueger. The
man sprinted down Transyl-
vania Park. One of O’Mara’s
housemates called out to the
man, “You okay?” He ducked
behind a pillar on the porch
of O’Mara’s house and asked
if he could trust them.
O’Mara said the man who
had been with Krueger kept
repeating: “We should call
911. I don’t know where my
friend is.”
By that time, authorities
had already arrived, so O’Mara
and four others walked the
friend to the police. O’Mara
said they first tried to help the
man find his friend.
“I don’t think he could
recognize the person on the
ground (Krueger),” O’Mara
said. “He said, ‘My friend
was wearing a hat.’” A hat
was visible on the street af-
ter the shooting.
O’Mara said that the man
they helped was clearly in
shock and that his shirt was
ripped.
He told O’Mara and his
housemates that people
drove up in a van, got out
and jumped him. His watch
and wallet were taken, but
he got away and started run-
ning. When he heard gun-
shots, he did not turn back,
O’Mara said.
Dazmond Morgan, who
lives on Maxwell Street,
said he was the first person
to reach Krueger after hear-
ing three or four gunshots
outside the building about
2:15 a.m. Morgan said Krue-
ger was alone when Mor-
gan reached him. Krueger
was jerking as he struggled
to breathe, Morgan said. A
neighbor came out onto the
street to help, Morgan said.
He said police later ques-
tioned him and others who
helped Krueger.
Krueger’s body was to
be taken to Frankfort for an
autopsy Friday at the state
medical examiner’s office.
WKYT-TV reported that
police recovered a firearm
on Cambridge Drive during
their investigation. But city
spokeswoman Susan Straub
said later that she would not
confirm that.
Krueger was in the UK
College of Communications
and Information and served
on the Kentucky Kernel staff
for at least two years.
Advising grieving stu-
dents to reach out to friends,
family and UK’s counseling
service, Capilouto said, “We
extend our deepest sympa-
thies to Jonathan’s family,
friends, faculty members and
fellow students. We have
reached out to his family to
let them know that we are
here to assist them in any
way we can at the incompre-
hensible moment.”
Diaz has pending felony
charges in Fayette County,
according to court records.
He pleaded not guilty in
January to a first-degree bur-
glary charge in connection
with the 2014 burglary of a
residence on Fort Harrods
Drive in which he was accused
of having burglary tools.
And he pleaded not guilty
last year to a charge of pos-
session of a controlled sub-
stance and criminal trespass-
ing when police said they
found him in a gated com-
munity in which he said he
didn’t know any residents.
Police said they found an
oxycodone pill in his pocket.
Records indicate that Diaz
was released from jail after
bonds were posted in each
case.
From Page A1
SHOOTING
Memorial service
A service hosted by the Kentucky
Kernel will be held at 8 p.m.
Monday at UK’s Memorial Hall.
Justin D. Smith, 18, stuck out his tongue as he sat in a police
car behind Lexington police headquarters Friday. Smith has been
charged with murder in the death of UK student Jonathan Krueger.
CHARLES BERTRAM | cbertram@herald-leader.com
Staff writer Greg Kocher con-
tributed to this story. Hannah
Scheller: (859) 231-1330. Twitter:
@HannahScheller.
Jonathan Krueger photographed the Wildcats as they warmed up near their locker room before
playing Notre Dame in Cleveland last month. At right was strength coach Ray “Rock” Oliver.
CHARLES BERTRAM | cbertram@herald-leader.com
From Page A1
KRUEGER
Beta Theta Pi brothers locked arms during a candlelight vigil in
honor of Krueger at the Newman Center on Friday night.
MATT GOINS
Staff writer Greg Kocher contrib-
uted to this story.
Jim Warren: (859) 231-3255
