Family of South Austin homicide victim worried about him before his death

Family of victim says he knew he was going to be killed

The family of a South Austin homicide victim says he knew he was going to be killed, now they're asking for the public's help solving the case.

AUSTIN, Texas - The cousins of homicide victim Cory Arizmendez set a memorial out on the South Austin street where his body was discovered Easter Sunday.

One cousin agreed to speak with FOX 7 Austin on the phone but asked her name be kept private due to safety concerns.

"We don’t know what’s going on," she explained.

The 35-year-old ironworker's body was found on East Milton Street, two blocks from South Congress, around 4 a.m. Sunday

"We kind of feel that that area is a real busy traffic area that, you know, we keep reaching out. Somebody saw something just because of the heavy traffic and heavy flow," his cousin said.

Arizmendez’s mother, Anne Martinez, says her son warned her he would be killed.

"He had been talking to me for about five weeks that he was in danger. He couldn't tell me very much," Martinez said. "Just saying, I love you. You know, I'm going to go over here if you don't hear from me, mom, you know, at least you know."

Martinez says the situation was "very frightening" and she had talked with her husband and Arizmendez's siblings about it.

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"You know, we're all like, is he going crazy? You know, and I let them know, like, he's stone-cold sober…The details that he did give me, which is not very much when he repeated it, it was verbatim the exact same thing over a five-week span," she added. "It scared me to death because he felt he was going to be killed. He in his heart, he knew he was going to die. And he just wanted me to know."

Martinez says her son decided not to go home to Fort Bend County.

"He wanted to face whatever it was. And that's not who Cory was, you know, he just wasn't going to back down and, you know, be made to cowered," she said.

Arizmendez came to Austin two years ago for a higher paying union job and a clean slate for him and his 13 and 4-year-old daughters.

"[He will] never walk them down an aisle at graduation, and he'll never see his own grandkids. And you know, Emory is so small I don't even know she'll remember him, like his voice. So we'll have to carry on his memory by talking about him," Martinez said.

Martinez is asking anybody with cameras in the area to share their Easter morning footage, even if it seems insignificant, with the Austin Police Department.

"My son is not number 20. Death number 20 in Austin. My son is a 35-year-old father, son, brother, friend to many," Martinez said. "We just…we just want answers, you know, and I have to bury my son without knowing why. And that's too painful, and I shouldn't be doing that."

Martinez says her son had been living in an apartment with a friend about three miles from where his body was found.