SAN ANTONIO — Katrina Ornelas says theirs was a true love story.
"He was the maintenance man at my old apartment complex. So literally my husband came knocking at my door," she said of a love story that quickly wrote itself.
"Two years later we were married," she said.
But the love story came to a sudden end.
"By the time I knew it, I was talking to homicide."
Ornelas' husband, 41-year-old Nicholas Ciarrocchi, was shot on June 3rd outside an east side corner store. He died less than a mile from the home they had recently moved into.
It was the police car lights that she saw on the news that evening that changed her life.
"That's how I really found out that that was my husband. That that was my car. It was via the news. That's how I was informed that my husband had been murdered via 30 to 40 bullets into our car," she said.
The shooter was never caught. A black truck driving off from the scene was the only information police had. But it's the lack of cooperation from the community that Ornelas finds most frustrating.
"I know there are people out there that know what happened to my husband. But because of that stigma of snitches get stitches, people are afraid," she said.
Despite the anger, she's not leaving their home. She's turning her grief into strength and be the person who will take a stand.
"I want for people to be fearless. we need to take ownership. we need to take the east side back. We need to say, no. no."
Nothing will bring her husband back she says maybe his death will be what it takes to keep others from suffering the same senseless loss.
"I know somebody out there knows. Report it anonymously. No one needs to know. But I need to know. I need to know who took my husband from me," she said.