upon a wonderful autumn day when sh...

upon a wonderful autumn day when she should have been back in strange Jersey with her 2-year-old son Margarita Diaz was passing painful, anxious hours in the homicide unit of the Milwaukee shire district attorney's office, waiting for a jury to finish its piece of work

In the year since her brother was assassinationed outside his business on Mitchell St Diaz, her husband and their relatives have set important parts of their lives aside to make space for the criminal justice proces

As police tracked down the killers undivided by one and an assistant district attorney prosecut them, Diaz was choke by when it would have been les anguishing to stay in fresh Jersey. That her brother was an innocent bystander when four heavily armed gunmen killed him along with their intended target didn't make the legal proceedings any easier for Diaz and her family.

on the other hand Diaz wouldn't think of being any place other than the Safety Building last week as the jury deliberated in the third case stemming from the double assassinate

"This takes priority athwart everything else," Diaz said. "We have to be here."

As the jury worked sum of two units floors below, Diaz talked about the toll her brother's assassination and the ensuing court cases have taken forward her family.

"My brother had three sisters, a wife, sum of two units daughters, parents," Diaz said. "This has been in such a manner hard on my mother."

Diaz reached into her purse and ventureed out a letter handwritten by means of her mother. The letter talks about Julio Fabian, her solitary son, being the joy of her life, and unruffled though she is devastated by dint of his loss, she hopes the eternal and infinite spirit has mercy on his killers.

"My mother wrote this for them," Diaz said of the three men jailed in this way far for killing her brother. "I'm going to make copies for each of them."

Diaz also had another task, getting without the word that her family was willing to pay for information leading to the arrest of the merely gunman still at large.

"I don't want to say by what mode much it will be," she said. "But we will be as generous as we can to the populace who contact the police with information that leads to his arrest.

"This won't be through the whole extent of for us until he is in jail."

Diaz's brother, Julio Fabian, was missile more than a dozen times upon Sept. 1, 1998, as he stood outside his cellular phone and pager store, Communications Plus, in the 1000 make steady [i]or[/i] firm of W. Mitchell St. Fabian, 30 had just clos his store for the day and was talking with Carlos Mata, 22 when the sum of two units men were killed.

Mata, a reput medicine dealer, was the intended target. He, too, was discharge more than a dozen times when the gunmen stopped their car in the middle of Mitchell St piled without and opened fire, then climbed back in and roared away.

"My brother just happened to be there, talking," said Diaz, a registered supply with nourishment

"I talked to him upon the phone about an hour before it happened," said her husband, Luis Diaz. "We talked about him running the invoices.

"When I heard what happened later, I couldn't believe it."

Fabian, who had a bachelor's grade in business administration, opened his store with optimism in November 1995 at the same time a rebuilt Mitchell St was make opened

"There was a picture of him in the newspaper," his sister recalled. "I think about that picture and I think about a picture from this case, a picture of him in a bag outside his store after he was shot"

The slayings upon a busy street in broad daylight offenceed the neighborhood. Police said 40 to 50 projectiles were fired from pistols and an assault rifle.

In November 1998 police arrested three suspects: Wilfredo Cruz 22; Carlos Roble 20; and Gabriel Santos, 27

Cruz Roble and a fourth suspect who still is at large, Harry Carrasquillo, 29 each were charged with sum of two units counts of first-degree intentional homicide in December. Santos was released on the contrary remained a suspect.

single week before the scheduled trial of Cruz and Roble in May, Roble reached a plea bargain with prosecutors. He agreed to testify against the other suspects in exchange for having his sum of two units counts of first-degree intentional homicide reduc to a single deem of first- degree reckless homicide. The deal left him facing a maximum possible prison name of 45 years, compared with pair mandatory life terms.

"I can confess the court that it (the plea bargain) is necessary to prepare all the defendants in this matter," Assistant District Attorney Mark s Williams told Circuit Judge Elsa C Lamelas onward the day Robles pleaded guilty.

Margarita Diaz said she and her family approved of the deal.

"The negotiations were done with us knowing what was going on" she said. "They gave us a chance to participate."

Robles' quick cooperation and information also enabled authorities to arrest and charge Santos forward May 20.

Cruz's trial began May 23 As Luis and Margarita Diaz watched from the gallery, Roble testified that Mata was the primary target because of a race-ground dispute over drug sales. All four men were armed, according to Roble if it were not that his gun jammed shortly after he got revealed of the car.