‘Worst pain in my life’: Dad mourns teen daughter killed at Kansas City celebration
When Heriberto Barraza walks past his daughter’s empty bedroom, he can still hear her singing.
Daisy Martinez’s voice, now only a memory, plays like a recording inside his mind. She was particularly fond of Spanish love songs.
“That’s probably what gets me the most right now,” Barraza said of his 19-year-old daughter who was killed less than a week ago. “I miss her.”
Martinez — who was fatally shot Wednesday night during a Mexican Independence Day celebration on Southwest Boulevard — had a distinct laugh, said Barraza, 42.
Her step-brother, Michael Ryan, described it as more of a cackle: goofy, but also sweet, much like Martinez.
“There’s no words to describe what type of person she was,” said 20-year-old Ryan. “She was just Daisy. There was no other person like her.”
Though born in Kansas City, Martinez spent about a decade of her childhood with her grandmother in Mexico. Her grandmother recently passed away, but Martinez dreamed of returning to the solitude of nature there.
This was among many dreams the young woman spoke aloud to her step-brother during one of their frequent chats over sweetened coffee in the mornings.
Martinez, who often did her friends’ makeup when they came over, spoke of going to community college and cosmetology school. But the 2019 East High School graduate also entertained the possibility of becoming a lawyer.
“She didn’t really think it was realistic,” Ryan said. “But I’m sure she could’ve done it.”
It was in her nature to help people, family said.
When Ryan found himself struggling with depression as a teenager, Martinez, who also struggled with depression and anxiety, was by his side to talk about it.
“She was overcoming a lot of stuff, and she was just now starting to do it,” he said.
‘She just wanted to have fun.’
Martinez was also a homebody.
“I would call her room the bubble. I would ask her, ‘Daisy are you going to come out of your bubble today?’” Barraza recalled.
“I might, I don’t know,” he said, mimicking her saying with a touch of sass.
That’s why he didn’t worry about her.
Martinez’s decision to go to Wednesday’s celebration was out of her comfort zone, Ryan said.
“She just wanted to have fun, just like everybody else there,” he said.
“It was supposed to be a family event,” Barraza added.
When detectives came by Barraza’s home Thursday morning, they asked to see a photo of Martinez. He showed them her school photo from junior year. Martinez smiled softly from inside an ornate frame, the backdrop of a bookshelf behind her, hands resting on a chair-back in front of her.
The detectives examined the photo, then confirmed the woman they found suffering from a gunshot wound on the sidewalk near Southwest Boulevard and West 27th Street was his daughter.
Prosecutors have since charged 30-year-old Diego Calderon-Guzman with second-degree murder in the shooting that left Martinez dead and another woman injured. Police have said that he shot into a crowd of dozens, if not hundreds of people gathered for a car show that evening.
‘A father’s message: Put the guns down!’
“The city’s out of control. We need to put the guns down. Stop the violence,” Barraza said, echoing the sentiments of dozens of other Kansas Citians whose loved ones were lost to gun violence.
Over the weekend, Barraza was among dozens of family members who came together outside the Advance Auto Parts along East Truman Road in Kansas City to raise money to give the young woman a “proper, beautiful” funeral.
They washed cars in exchange for donations. Her grandfather pushed a large sponge across the side of a red pickup truck as her aunts grilled food nearby.
A cardboard sign leaned against a tree read, “A father’s message: Put the guns down! Worst pain in my life!”
As a departure from the busyness of planning his daughter’s funeral, Barraza finds solace in the fire pit in his yard.
He watches the flames dance as he talks to his daughter in the silence of the night.
About a month ago, Martinez asked Barraza to help pick out her first car, settling on a blue Nissan Sentra. She was happy. He was proud.
As Barraza left his home Tuesday afternoon, he passed her car, still parked on the curb. She’d recently asked him to tint the windows so it felt less like a “fish bowl.”
He still plans to do it for her.
As he headed to the funeral home, Barraza carried with him a bag filled with donations from the car wash, and the outfit his daughter was to be buried in.
The sparkly, black fabric of Martinez’s homecoming dress peaked out from a shoe box as he gathered the items to put in the car.
“Every day was an unforgettable day with Daisy,” Barraza said moments earlier. “She was a beautiful person. It wasn’t her time to go.”
Martinez will be laid to rest Thursday at Mount Saint Mary’s cemetery next to her best friend, who died by suicide two years ago. Her grandmother’s Bible and rosary will be by her side.
Gun violence will be the subject of a new, statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 5:29 PM.
