NC dad hopes for answers after daughter found fatally shot in car down an embankment
UPDATE: On Monday, Feb. 15, 2021, Gastonia police said they arrested a 16-year-old in connection with the case and charged the juvenile with first-degree murder and robbery.
Rafael Martinez hopes someone will finally come forward after his daughter was found dead with a bullet in her head in a car down a Gastonia embankment.
Gastonia police found 41-year-old Francia Magally Martinez on the morning of Jan. 21 after responding to a call about a car in the 1000 block of West 10th Avenue. Police said she had been killed.
Rafael Martinez said she had recently become a grandmother.
Police have released no other details about the circumstances of Francia Martinez’s death, but issued another plea to the public this week for information.
Rafael Martinez told The Charlotte Observer on Thursday that he urged the police to keep publicizing his daughter’s case.
“This has to be made public,” he said he told the police detective in charge.
“They haven’t told us too much, only that they’re making progress, but they can’t say anything,” Martinez told the Observer.
“We want answers,” he said. “Who was the killer, and why did they take her life? What were the reasons they did it?”
Chance for a better life
Martinez said he moved his family to America in the early 1980s from war-torn Nicaragua to give his children a better chance in life.
Daughter Francia was born in Nicaragua on Jan. 1, 1980, he said.
Before moving to America, Martinez said, he worked 27 years handling radio communications on cargo ships and later, in America, on Carnival cruises. .
Friends attracted him to Gastonia after he retired in 1992 from his work on ships. He was quickly hired by a commercial electrical company, he said, and stayed with the firm for a decade, until it went bankrupt.
He now works as an interpreter for a company that provides translation services at local hospitals and clinics.
Martinez said he tried to raise his daughter and her siblings “the best way possible,” but his daughter began running with the “wrong crowd” in her teens and had her troubles with the law over the years.
“I got disconnected with her because of the lifestyle she had,” but his daughter reached out to him whenever she needed help, including with her kids, he said.
Francia Martinez had two daughters and three sons, one of whom preceded her in death. She had an infant grandson.
Rafael Martinez helped however he could, he said, and loves her to this day.
Request for information
Gastonia police are asking for the public’s help in the homicide of Francia Magally Martinez. Anyone with information is asked to call Detective C.D. Huffstetler at 704-842-5192 or Crime Stoppers of Gaston County at 704-861-8000. Crime Stoppers pays cash for tips that lead to an arrest.
This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 5:30 PM.