Father offered $15K to have daughter’s ex-lover shot dead in Fort Worth alley: police
Arriving in their neighborhood in the middle of the night after getting off of work from a restaurant job, Martin Diaz was asked by his neighbor whether he wanted to go fire a gun in the alley.
Diaz agreed. They had done that in the past.
On this occasion, just before 3 a.m. on Saturday, only Luis Gomez De La Cruz would pull a trigger, Fort Worth police allege.
Once in the lane of gravel and grass between houses in south Fort Worth, Gomez De La Cruz’s intent became clear, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram. He shot Diaz in the head, Gomez De La Cruz would confess to homicide detectives the next day.
Diaz fell to the ground in front of a Honda.
Gomez De La Cruz fired another round into Diaz’s head, according to the affidavit.
With that, the job was complete.
A man named David Villanueva-Carbajal had promised to pay Gomez De La Cruz $10,000 or $15,000 to kill Diaz, who was 30 and previously dated Villanueva-Carbajal’s daughter, according to an account of De La Cruz’s confession that is described in the affidavit that Fort Worth Police Department Homicide Unit Detective Kyle Sullivan wrote in support of the arrest warrant.
Diaz and his ex-girlfriend had an ongoing dispute, according to the affidavit.
The killing’s final price had not been negotiated.
In an interview with Sullivan and Detective Jerry Cedillo, Gomez De La Cruz, 29, said Villanueva-Carbajal, 45, had previously discussed paying him to kill Diaz, according to the affidavit.
On Friday, March 21, Gomez De La Cruz saw Villanueva-Carbajal at Villanueva-Carbajal’s vacant house two houses away from his house. Between them is another vacant house where the daughter used to live with her parents.
Villanueva-Carbajal asked Gomez De La Cruz how the “project” was going. Gomez De La Cruz understood that to be a reference to the previously discussed murder for hire plan, Detective Sullivan wrote in the affidavit.
The next day the man who police allege was a hired killer waited in a truck in a parking lot for Diaz to leave work, then followed, according to the affidavit.
Gomez De La Cruz in the interview lied and gave a false account of his whereabouts on the morning of the killing before he changed his story and confessed to murdering Diaz in the 2600 block of Covert Avenue, according to the affidavit.
Gomez De La Cruz told the detectives he drove the next day to Villanueva-Carbajal’s house in Dallas to let him know about killing Diaz.
Villanueva-Carbajal already knew Diaz was dead and told De La Cruz he would pay him when a house he owned was sold, according to the affidavit.
Their alleged arrangement will remain unfulfilled.
Gomez De La Cruz and Villanueva-Carbajal were arrested and charged with capital murder for remuneration. Both men were in the Tarrant County Jail on Thursday. Bond has been set at $500,000 for Gomez De La Cruz and $750,000 for Villanueva-Carbajal.
Diaz’s sister-in-law organized a GoFundMe account to raise money for funeral expenses. In the description, she wrote that Diaz was a father of two children, 5 and 11 years old. She described Diaz as “a charismatic, hard working man full of life, with a brave and kind heart.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 4:18 PM.
