Mexico City — Spanish industrial group Dimasa Grupo said a Jan. 21 funeral is set for the managing director of its manufacturing operation in Mexico who was shot to death outside his home Jan. 12.
Segismundo Díaz Martín, 50, was apparently the victim of a botched robbery outside his home in the city of Puebla, but company spokesman Samuel Carrasco Ortega added that "for the moment no further details are available."
Situated in Vacarisses in the eastern Spanish province of Barcelona, Dimasa makes industrial gas and water tanks and auxiliary equipment from glass fiber reinforced polyester.
Díaz Martín was the eldest of four brothers who ran the company, founded by the family in 1986. He moved to Mexico in 2011 to establish affiliate Dimamex (Grupo Díaz Martín México S.A. de C.V.) in Papalotla de Xicohtencatl, in the neighboring state of Tlaxcala. Dimamex employs about 15.
According to Carrasco, Díaz Martín and his Mexican wife, whom he married recently, were planning to return to Spain to live in the coming months. Carrasco criticized the "lamentable lack of security" in Mexico and said Segismundo had been the victim of several earlier robberies in the country.
Police accounts, cited by several newspapers in Mexico, said Díaz Martín was shot after getting out of his car when the electric gates to the housing complex where he lived failed to open.
The reports said his wife, who stayed in the car while her husband went to investigate the gate malfunction, heard a gunshot, saw somebody running from the scene and found her spouse lying wounded on the ground.
Díaz Martín died at the scene before paramedics could help him, the reports said. They added that the assailant stole a bag in which Díaz Martín kept his diabetes insulin.
In a Spanish language statement emailed to Plastics News, Carrasco said: "The police investigation is ongoing and we cannot elaborate on news media reports. We are waiting to repatriate [Díaz Martín's] body to Spain for his funeral."
A poignant message of farewell to Díaz Martín accompanied Carrasco's email. "Goodbye, dear Segismundo," it read, alongside an image of two gloved hands in a handshake, one showing the colors of Spain's national flag and the other those of the Mexican flag.
Puebla is 83 miles southeast of Mexico City and is one of Mexico's most important industrial centers.