A caring father who first took his children to the park before going to grab them drinks and snacks was brutally stabbed to death in Orange County’s San Juan Capistrano.
Valentin Onofre Martinez, 31, was walking back to his kids from a store when he was stabbed multiple times in a neighborhood near Calle Santa Barbara and Los Rios Street around 8:10 p.m. on Oct. 7.
First responders rushed Martinez to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police detained several people at the scene, but no arrests have yet been made. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office has ruled the stabbing a homicide and assigned its Homicide and Gang Enforcement Team to the investigation.
Martinez’s grieving fianceé, Mia, says she hauntingly realized something was wrong when she heard sirens in the distance and got a phone call. She rushed to the scene.
“When I got here, everything was already completely blocked off with the caution tape. Hundreds of police,” she told ABC 7.
She discovered her fiancé and father of their children was dead. Mia had to tell her children that their father wouldn’t come home with them.
“They just keep asking for their dad. When is daddy coming back? And I just have to keep telling them that he’s not coming back,” she said.
The stabbing was not gang-related, she said, and sought to dispel misconceptions that her fiancé may have been gang-affiliated.
“They’re trying to paint this as something that it’s not, which is gang-related. And if it is then it’s only on one side and it’s not his side,” she said.
She believes her fiancé was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I need the answers because I’m just not going to be able to move past it and find closure or anything until I have all the answers and for them as well because they’re going to need answers too,” Mia said.
Mia said her fiancé cared for his three children, aged 3, 5, and 7 years old, closely. He also worked at Home Depot, she said.
“A father that was there every day of his kids life. He never missed a day. He took them to school, picked them up, went to work. He worked at Home Depot nights and still got up to take his kids to school,” Mia said.
A GoFundMe has been organized for Martinez’s funeral expenses with a goal of $15,000.
The victim’s mother said her son was a good person.
“He was a hardworking man, and he took so much care of his family,” she said in the fundraiser.
