Gunfire Ends Dream of Father of 3 : Crime: Family man worked two jobs to save enough to move back to Mexico, widow says. He was parking his car when he was fatally wounded.

Gavino Ruiz-Diaz was holding down two jobs so he could save enough money to move his family back to his native Mexico.

After working five hours at a fast-food restaurant and eight hours in a laundry, that dream ended when Ruiz-Diaz, 30, was shot as he parked his car outside his Pomona apartment Monday night. He died at a Pomona hospital on Tuesday.

As on every weekday, Ruiz-Diaz was up early Monday to begin his 7 a.m.-to-3:30 p.m. shift at a commercial laundry.

Oscar Perez, the laundry’s production manager, said Ruiz-Diaz “worked like a demon . . . . He was a real mild, easygoing kind of guy. The guy was always cheerful.”

Perez said the laundry held one of its periodic drawings on Monday to reward employees with cash for their good safety record and Ruiz-Diaz was one of the $20 winners.

What started as a lucky day turned to tragedy, Perez said.

“It’s a shame.”

The death of Ruiz-Diaz left police, friends and neighbors wondering who would want to kill such a cheerful, hard-working family man. There was no apparent motive, said Police Lt. Ron Frazier.

Frazier said Ruiz-Diaz had just parked his car in an alley outside his apartment when several shots were fired through the passenger window, hitting him in the body. Neighbors said they heard four or five shots.

Witnesses reported seeing two young men speed from the alley in an early 1980s Nissan 280-Z moments after the shots were fired, Frazier said.

One witness, who declined to give her name, said she heard Ruiz-Diaz call for his wife, Dominga, who was in their upstairs apartment, before he left the car and collapsed in the alley. He died Tuesday morning at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.

Through an interpreter, Dominga Ruiz-Diaz said her husband had been working two jobs for more than two years, since the family had come to the United States from the state of Aguascaliente in central Mexico, looking for prosperity. He worked at a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant as well as at the laundry.

“We were hoping to save money and go back to Mexico,” she said.

Now, she said, she has no idea what she and her three children, who range in age from 4 to 9, will do.

A co-worker at the laundry, Jose Garcia, said Ruiz-Diaz was “a very nice person,” not at all the sort that one would imagine could be touched by violence.

“I never knew him to have any enemies,” Garcia said.

But residents of the Pomona neighborhood of low-income apartments where Ruiz-Diaz lived said violence could hit anyone there.

“You hear gunshots almost every other night so it’s no big deal,” said Gabriel Arellano, 28.

Frank Deroo, 39, said that although he has grown accustomed to the sight of ambulances and police cars in the area, it is still a shock to hear shots, run out of your apartment and see someone dying.

“It happened right outside my door,” he said. “Now I know how unsafe it is.”