http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/crime/stories/DN-mistakenid_22met.ART.State.Edition1.26c82d5.html
RICHARDSON – Gladys Rivera Reyes had just finished her shift at a Richardson restaurant one recent Friday night when she began her solo trek home shortly after 10 p.m.
"She had started walking home because she wanted to lose weight," said Mirela Hysenaj, a manager at the Italian eatery where Ms. Reyes had worked for three years.
Ms. Reyes was about halfway home when Juan Seghelmeble, a Peruvian immigrant with a history of mental problems, spotted her as he drove along Coit Road, police say. He apparently thought she looked like someone he knew – his estranged wife.
He pulled into a side street, stopped his car, and grabbed a knife, authorities say.
Within minutes, the 48-year-old mother was lying dead in the road, a victim of what police say is a case of mistaken identity.
The Sept. 12 slaying has devastated the Reyes family.
"We've just never experienced anything like this before," said one of Ms. Reyes' children through an interpreter. He and the rest of her family declined additional comment.
Ms. Hysenaj said the restaurant employees had taken up a collection to help Ms. Reyes' family send her body back to her native Honduras.
Mr. Seghelmeble, 36, has been charged with murder and is being held in Dallas County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.
For several days after the attack, Mr. Seghelmeble's mother, Aida Aranda of Dallas, worried about her son. She learned from The Dallas Morning News that he was in jail.
She said she hadn't heard from him since he decided to go for a drive the evening of Sept. 12.
"It was such a beautiful evening," recalled Ms. Aranda.
But the scene that would follow a few hours later in the 500 block of Coit Road was anything but. Authorities say Ms. Reyes was already dead when they arrived.
Mr. Seghelmeble was standing about 100 yards away with a bloody knife in his hand, according to a police report. Several people had surrounded the bloodstained suspect. They were too late to stop the attack but were able to corner the suspect until police arrived.
Witness Jose Luis Gimenez told police that he was driving north on Coit when he saw a man and woman struggling. As he got closer, he saw the woman fall to the ground. A man stood over her, stabbing her repeatedly.
The violent assault halted only after Mr. Gimenez stopped his car, grabbed a CD case, and threw it at the attacker, striking him in the head, police reported.
Mr. Gimenez told police he heard the suspect utter the Spanish words for "is my wife" and say that she had been cheating on him.
But as police questioned Mr. Seghelmeble, they came to realize that he and Ms. Reyes had been strangers.
Ms. Aranda said that she came to America from Peru in 1988 and that her son followed five years later.
While living in New York City, she said, Mr. Seghelmeble was working at a fast-food restaurant when it was robbed. He was tied up and left in a bathroom, she said. The incident traumatized him, and she said he hasn't been the same since.
He's on disability for mental problems and is unable to work, she said. He has trouble sleeping and is easily confused. And she said he can't always remember whether he's taken his medication for his condition.
Despite his disability, she said, her son married a Peruvian woman in 2005 – the year he moved to Dallas. But the couple eventually split, and the breakup has been hard for her son to accept, Ms. Aranda said.
"He gets these ideas in his mind that she's still around," said Ms. Aranda, who believes the woman has moved back to Peru.
As she talked about her son, Ms. Aranda recalled the last words she spoke to him as he headed out the door that fateful evening.
She told him to "be careful" because "it's dangerous out there."
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