Cal Poly grad student fatally injured in hit-and-run crash remembered as ‘a rising star’
By: STEPHANIE ZAPPELLI
Andreas Kooi was curious about the universe. Kooi, 23, studied quantum computation, read Russian literature, made films with friends and took time-lapsed photos of the stars. “He really wanted to get deep into things,” his brother, David Kooi, said. The incoming Cal Poly graduate student was fatally injured Aug. 6 while biking home from a movie night at a friend’s house.
A 17-year-old San Luis Obispo resident was driving westbound on Foothill Boulevard at 12:38 am when her vehicle collided with Kooi’s bike near the Broad Street intersection, according to a San Luis Obispo city news release. The driver, who was not identified by name because she is a minor, then drove away, the release said. She was found walking on Rockview Place at 2 a.m. with her car parked in the roadway, according to police. Paramedics found Kooi at the scene of the collision without a heart beat, and resuscitated him. He was taken to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo.
Kooi had no brain activity, but the hospital kept his body alive until Thursday to fulfill his wish to be an organ donor, his father, Jacob Kooi, said. On Wednesday, the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office charged the driver with two felonies: hit-and-run and driving under the influence of intoxicants — both charges enhanced with great bodily injury. The DA’s Office may amend the driver’s charges to include vehicular manslaughter in the coming days, an agency spokesperson told the Tribune.
Prosecutors are also filing a request to charge the driver as an adult. If they succeed, her name and the court proceedings will become public. In 2017, an underage drunk driver struck and killed 22-year-old Cal Poly student Kennedy Love on Foothill Boulevard, close to to the site of the crash that fatally injured Kooi. That driver — Gianna Brencola, then 17 — was tried as an adult and sentenced to seven years in state prison for vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run resulting in death.
“I want to see a world where we all seek to give instead of consume things in order to cover the universal pains we feel,” Andreas Kooi, who was killed by a drunk driver, wrote when he released his album. “Death is a black canopy, but everyone’s light can be lit by our Creator."
Andreas Kooi graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2021 with degrees in applied physics and statistics.
SLO man fatally injured in crash made movies, loved Russian literature
Kooi attended Cuesta College from 2016 to 2018 studying a variety of topics, from computer science to civil engineering. His father, Jacob, said he was searching for what to study, testing out different classes and hobbies to see what clicked.
In 2018, Kooi transferred to UC Santa Cruz, where he studied applied physics and statistics. He interned in a graduate lab, which is rare for an undergraduate student, his brother said. His senior year, he wrote his bachelor’s thesis on quantum computation. “You’d think he’d be all square-ball with all that extreme physics,” Kooi’s friend Liam Somers said. “But when he’s hangin’ out with us, he’s just like this super funky dude.” Somers met Kooi at Cuesta College in 2016, and the two became close friends. When Kooi and Somers lived at San Luis Obispo’s Stenner Glen Apartments, they wrote “weird movie scripts” that had a Quentin Tarantino vibe, Somers said.
Once they bought a blue and red lighting kit, and “it looked like we were shooting a porno,” Somers said, laughing. “But we were just f**king around with retro lighting.” Another time, the pair drove to a Creston film and television production facility owned by Todd Fisher, son of “Singin’ in the Rain” star Debbie Reynolds and brother of “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher. “We just randomly drove all the way over — through a dirt road — out to the middle of nowhere,” Somers said.
He and Kooi knocked on the door of the Hollywood Motion Picture Experience office and asked if the company needed interns. The answer was no. “We did cringey things like that all the time,” Somers said. “It was pretty fun.” Every year, Kooi and Somers would round up their friends and embark on adventures. They hiked in the Sierra Nevada mountains multiple times, and climbed the tallest sand dune in California at Death Valley. They called their trips “misadventures” because something always went wrong and most of the time it had to do with Somers’ car, he said.
Somers remembers stopping on a mountain road to fix his car and swearing while Kooi jammed out on his guitar and lifted the mood. “We made really silly movies out of all these adventures,” Somers said, calling the movies “Dre-dits” because Kooi edited them. “It was all just insanely weird random strange things.” “He’s such a weirdo and I love him,” his friend Liam Somers said. Kooi also loved to read Russian literature. His reading list included Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” and Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” his brother David Kooi said.
“He liked Russian literature because ... it was philosophy that was made real life,” David Kooi said. “The characters of the book were living through different philosophical ideas and lenses.” Kooi said he and his brother talked on the phone frequently about books, faith and their hobbies. “He was just as much a friend to me as a brother,” David Kooi said. That was typical behavior for Andreas Kooi, who kept notes to remind himself to encourage his friends, his mother said. “He does that to his friends — encourage them, lift them up,” Helen Kooi said. Kooi said his brother worked hard and pushed himself in school, but also knew how to rest.
“He wasn’t a robot,” Kooi said of his brother. “He was very aware of his body and aware of his being, and I think he wrestled between those things; wanting to do stuff and wanting to find truth and to be productive, but also wanting to be with friends, wanting to be experiential, just wanting to be and to exist and to make his art.” This fall, Andreas Kooi planned to start his master’s degree at Cal Poly in business analytics. With this degree, he wanted to help nonprofit organizations with data analytics and business operations, he wrote on LinkedIn. “Just imagine if he hadn’t died, where he would have been in, let’s say, 20, 30 years,” Kooi’s father said. “He was such a rising star, and this is what breaks our hearts.”
Andreas Kooi poses for a photo with his father, Jacob, his brother David, and his mother, Helen. David Kooi graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2020, and his brother followed in 2021. EliaPatty
Incoming Cal Poly student pondered death in days before collision On Aug. 5, the day before he was fatally injured in the Foothill Boulevard collision, Kooi released a music album titled “Feeling Emotion.”
In the release statement for the album, Kooi wrote, “I want to see a world where we all seek to give instead of consume things in order to cover the universal pains we feel. Death is a black canopy, but everyone’s light can be lit by our Creator.” “I have been using the creation of these songs for therapeutic and healing purposes, to fully feel trauma and pain, and allow it to transform me so that I may be closer to God,” he wrote. Kooi had been thinking about death, pain and how people try to numb that pain, his brother said. “He was looking at those dark places, but he also saw that there was a light beyond that darkness,” David Kooi said.
“He didn’t want to be a victim to the things of his past,” David Kooi said of his brother. “He wanted to recognize, acknowledge them, but also to work on them and move past some things and be healthy. ... He had really deep, deep waters.”
