Joe Martinez was last seen leaving his uncle’s Oak Cliff apartment on June 27, 2015. His case has gone cold, but his family is not giving up in their search for justice.
For more than a year the family of Joe Martinez has had to live with the fact that the Dallas teenager's killer is still on the run.
"I wake up and I think of my son. I go to work, I think of my son. I go to sleep, I think of my son. He's always on my mind," said Rachel Casillas, Martinez's mother.
Martinez's body was found on June 28, 2015, in an alley near the 2800 block of West Brooklyn Avenue. He had been fatally shot.
Martinez had spent most of the day at his uncle's apartment about a mile away from the crime scene.
"It was a normal day. What can you expect to go wrong?" said Martinez's uncle, Luis Jimenez. "I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want it to be him."
In the year since his murder police have had little to no leads. Chatter among Martinez's friends in the days following his death gave his family false hope that one of his friends knew who killed him.
"They all say they know something, this and that, but you telling us is not really going to do anything. Go to the cops," Jimenez said.
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Martinez's mother said having to bury her son was unbearable. That pain is compounded by the fact that earlier that day her son had made her an incredible promise. The rambunctious 15-year-old was ready to settle down and work hard in school.
"We talked that day. He's like, 'Mom I want to do better. I want to go to school. I want to finish. I want to graduate like my uncle Luis,'" she recalled. "I said, 'Yeah, baby, even if I have to drag you across that stage, you're going to graduate.' I wanted him to be better. I didn't want him to be another statistic."
Martinez would have been a sophomore in high school this year. The headstone at his grave site tells an incomplete story. There are baby pictures, pictures of Joe Martinez as a young teen, and then nothing else.
Martinez's family said the life that was cut short was so full of promise. All they have left are memories and an unflinching perseverance to find justice.
"He didn't deserve what happened to him," his mother said.
