Neil Gandler, a Palo Alto resident who was active in the Jewish community and a member of a Jewish-Palestinian dialogue group in the Bay Area, was killed early in the morning of Dec. 29 in Las Vegas during what police said was an attempted car robbery in a 24 Hour Fitness parking lot.
Gandler, 42, a tech industry engineer, was visiting Las Vegas to attend CES, a huge consumer electronics trade show. Friends told J. he regularly slept in his car and showered at gyms as a frugality measure while traveling, though the Las Vegas Review-Journal called him “a vagabond by choice” who “called his car home.”
Police said they received a call at 1:20 a.m. about a shooting; Gandler died from a gunshot wound to the torso, according to the Clark County coroner.
Gandler was active in the Young Adults group of the Jewish Community Federation and also used to participate in events run by the young adult group at Congregation Beth David in Saratoga. He also was a regular in the Living Room Dialogue, an interfaith Jewish-Palestinian discussion group on the Peninsula.
“It’s a very sad loss. He was a really sweet, thoughtful, unique kind of individual,” said Libby Traubman, who co-leads the dialogue group with her husband, Len. “He was his own person.”
Gandler was born in New York and grew up on Long Island, where he was raised in a Conservative Jewish home. In 1997 he moved to the Bay Area, where he worked in various capacities for several Silicon Valley technology companies. In 2002, he became interested in dialoguing with Palestinians after attending a presentation by the Traubmans at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Even though he described himself as “right of center,” he told the couple he was interested in breaking through rhetoric and learning how the conflict was experienced by individuals.
“He was such a beautiful, healthy young man who came to the meetings 99 percent of the time on a bicycle, always with a smile on his face,” said Elias Botto, 83, a Palestinian and Jerusalem native who was a member of the dialogue group. “It was a pleasure to be in a place together with him.”
Gandler’s participation in the dialogue group inspired him to visit the West Bank during a 2005 trip to Israel. “He loved the Jewish community, but he wanted it to be better,” Len Traubman said.
“He cultivated a persona as a conservative gadfly, but he didn’t have any animosity toward anybody,” said Howard Metzenberg, a former Bay Area resident now living in Seattle who saw Gandler at Jewish events.
The federation’s Young Adult Division made a contribution to a fund (www.gofundme.com/neilgandler) established to help raise money for a private memorial service set for Sunday, Jan. 10 in Burlingame.
“I really enjoyed seeing him at all of our events and cannot speak highly enough of his contributions to our local Jewish community,” said David Saxe, YAD board president.
According to surveillance video, Gandler parked his car in the 24 Hour Fitness parking lot around 10 p.m. Dec. 28 without entering the gym; around 1 a.m., a two-door coupe pulled next to his car and, 15 minutes later, Gandler’s car rolled forward onto a curb. Police on Jan. 2 arrested two suspects, Megan Hippie, 19, and Kyle Staats, 27; both are facing murder and attempted robbery charges. Staats, a convicted felon, also faces a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm.
According to police, Hippie said the pair were trying to steal cars, and when they noticed Gandler sleeping in his vehicle, they approached him and tried to rob him. Staats shot Gandler and the suspects fled, Hippie reportedly told police.