Driving Park homicide victim was loving husband, TV repairman & reformed ex-con, says wife
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WYSX/WTTE) — A northeast side woman says she doesn't know why her husband of 29 years was in the Driving Park neighborhood Friday evening, when police say he was shot and killed in a still-unexplained homicide.
Dalton Diaz, 54, was pronounced dead at Grant Medical Center only minutes after police found him lifeless in the driver's seat of his SUV. A news release said Diaz was shot on East Columbus Street. Witnesses said they saw Diaz's car crashed into a playground at the Driving Park Community Center shortly after hearing three gunshots.
A day later on Saturday, Dalton's wife Katherine Diaz said Columbus Police told her that a transaction of some sort likely led to the shooting, with Diaz being hit in his car. The vehicle drifted for half a block before crashing into the playground, where police found Dalton unresponsive.
"I don't know why. I just don't understand," said Katherine on Saturday. She explained that Diaz was a television repairman, buying broken televisions to fix and re-sell for profit. He often made the exchanges with customers at gas stations or other very public places that were likely to have surveillance, and that's what he had told Katherine he was headed to do at about 5:15 p.m. on Friday.
Where he was shot — a residential neighborhood in a historically dicey part of town — didn't add up for Katherine when she got the news at 2:00 a.m. on Saturday.
"I don't know why he was down there," she said.
Columbus Police confirmed Diaz' identity on Saturday but did not release any further details of the shooting. So far, no arrests or suspects have been announced.
Diaz himself was an ex-con, according to Katherine, having spent more than 30 years in prison. Katherine says she met him while working for a prison system, and they ultimately married in 1990. She said prison reformed Dalton, taught him the errors of his ways and made him a loving and caring husband, willing to sacrifice for his marriage.
"But he always said he could tell if somebody was trying to get him to go to a bad neighborhood, or if somebody didn't sound legitimate," Katherine said. "I think it was because of his prison experience; he knew more about the streets than the average person," she said.
Katherine said on Saturday that she wasn't sure what would have taken Dalton so long to make a transaction for a television in that neighborhood. She said that much like Dalton, his killer must eventually be arrested and pay for the crime.
“You need to go to prison and learn this is not the way to handle disputes," Katherine said of whomever shot Diaz on Friday.
"He didn’t deserve to die like that," she said. "I think Dalton would forgive you...I'm not ready to forgive you. You need to pay."
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