Police Seek Gunman, Motive in Slaying of Immigrant

Homicide investigators continued their search Friday for a gunman who mortally wounded a Garden Grove man in a northwestern Santa Ana neighborhood Tuesday morning.

A driver saw Anastacio Segura Santana, 28, bleeding from the chest Tuesday morning in the 3700 block of West Washington Avenue, police said.

Santana, who was taken by paramedics to UCI Medical Center in Orange, died Thursday afternoon, police said. Santana was not able to talk with investigators because of his injuries, Haacker said.

Investigators do not know what may have led to the shooting, said Maureen Haacker, a department spokeswoman.

“We don’t have much on this,” Haacker said of the murder case. “We’re just trying to unravel this now.”

No one in the residential area reported hearing gunshots before Santana was found, Haacker said. His body was discovered about a mile from where he was living. Family members last saw him Sunday night, said a sister-in-law who declined to give her name.

Santana, who is from Zacatepec, a small town south of Mexico City, came to Orange County about two years ago looking for work to support his wife and a young daughter in Mexico, family members said.

The shooting victim was a construction worker in Mexico who became a cook at the Green Burrito restaurant in Tustin, a former co-worker said.

Santana spoke little of himself at the restaurant, said Silvia Andersen, 22. “I don’t know what happened. He was a good worker,” she said Friday.

Santana left his job and returned to his wife and child last year, relatives said. He had returned to Orange County 10 days ago and was looking for work, said a cousin, Leonor Udalgo, 20.

Santana’s widow, Rosario Beatriz de Segura, plans to come to Garden Grove to help arrange the burial in Mexico, Udalgo said.

Family members were left with many questions about his death, Udalgo said. “Nobody knows anything. They don’t know how it happened, who did it or anything.”