A 44-year-old mother of three from Honduras was found slain inside a Hebron residence early Friday after Connecticut State Police forced their way into the home following a disturbance call, opening a homicide investigation that authorities later said ended in an apparent murder-suicide.
The case drew wide attention in Connecticut because the public facts were both sparse and stark. Troopers were sent to 50 Main St. around 3:30 a.m. Friday, entered the residence after setting a perimeter and found two people dead inside. By Monday, authorities had identified the victim as Diana Enamorado Perdomo and the other dead person as Gregorio Calihua-Mantiel, both 44. The medical examiner ruled Perdomo’s death a homicide and Calihua-Mantiel’s death a suicide, but state police had still not publicly released a fuller account of what happened in the moments before officers arrived.
According to state police, the investigation began with a report of a disturbance at the Main Street address, a building with multiple apartments next to the Brick Cantina Mexican Restaurant. Troopers surrounded the home and called in additional resources before making forced entry. Inside, they found both bodies. In the first hours after the deaths, police described the case only as a suspicious incident. Main Street, also Route 66, was closed for a time while investigators worked, and local schools delayed opening as the police presence stretched through the morning. It was not until later that authorities publicly identified the dead and clarified the broad outline of the case. By then, the scene had shifted from an active emergency to a forensic investigation, with the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner taking leading roles in determining how the deaths happened and in what order.
Officials have confirmed the legal classification of the deaths, but many of the most basic facts remain unknown in the public record. The medical examiner said Perdomo died from blunt force trauma to the head, while Calihua-Mantiel died from ligature compression of the neck. State police have not publicly said what object caused Perdomo’s injuries or whether any prior calls for service were connected to the pair. People, citing family accounts and overseas reporting, said relatives believe she was beaten with a bat, but authorities have not publicly confirmed a weapon in the official materials reviewed Monday. Police also have not said whether anyone else was inside the apartment when the disturbance was reported, what prompted the call to authorities, or whether investigators recovered messages, surveillance footage or witness statements that help explain what led to the killings. Those unanswered questions leave the case in an unusual posture: the manner of death is settled, but much of the underlying story remains held by investigators rather than the public.
Perdomo’s relatives have filled in part of the human picture left blank by official statements. Her niece, Rubi Elizabeth Sagastume-Enamorado, told Connecticut media that Perdomo came to the United States about three years ago from Honduras seeking a better life. She said Perdomo was the mother of three daughters and grandmother of four, and she described her as a hardworking, kind and deeply family-centered woman. The niece also said Perdomo and Calihua-Mantiel had both worked at the restaurant next to the residence where they were found. According to her account, the relationship had become rocky and Perdomo had recently been talking about returning to Honduras in July to be with family. Sagastume-Enamorado said her aunt seemed upbeat in their last conversation on Thursday, making the violence that followed feel even more abrupt and harder for relatives to process. A fundraiser launched by the family says they are now trying to repatriate Perdomo’s body to Honduras for burial.
The setting added another layer of shock. The deaths happened in a visible commercial-residential stretch of Hebron’s Main Street, not in a remote or isolated part of town. Brick Cantina Mexican Restaurant, located next door, reopened after the incident and said it would donate its proceeds to the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence. That response underscored how quickly the deaths were understood locally not just as a police matter, but as part of the broader, familiar pattern of domestic violence cases that can erupt behind closed doors and then ripple outward through workplaces, neighborhoods and families. The residence where the bodies were found was also described in local reporting as housing restaurant workers, making the scene feel even more closely tied to the rhythms of everyday life in town. For much of Friday, the most visible signs of that rupture were police vehicles, blocked traffic and the lingering crime-scene presence beside a business that would soon reopen under the shadow of what had happened next door.
The procedural path now appears straightforward even if the emotional aftermath is not. Because both people believed to be directly involved are dead, the investigation is unlikely to produce criminal charges. Instead, the next formal steps are expected to come through autopsy documentation, any additional findings released by state police and the completion of the case file. Authorities may still decide to release more detail about the disturbance call, the physical evidence recovered from the home or the timeline leading up to the deaths. As of Monday, though, police had provided no extended narrative beyond the location, the response time, the forced entry and the death classifications. That means the case remains officially simple but publicly incomplete: one woman was killed, one man died by suicide, and the record of how the confrontation turned fatal has not yet been fully laid out by investigators.
The story has also resonated because Perdomo’s relatives have cast it not just as a homicide, but as the violent end of an immigrant mother’s attempt to build a new life. In public statements, they have focused on her children, her work and her hope of returning home. That emphasis has shifted some attention away from the person found dead beside her and toward the woman whose future was cut off. In cases like this, the legal labels of homicide and suicide can settle the investigation while leaving grief to do the harder work. Here, that grief stretches from Hebron to Honduras, where Perdomo’s daughters are waiting for the chance to bury her. For family members, the central fact is no longer the police timeline. It is the loss of a mother and grandmother they say had gone abroad to support the people she loved.
As of Monday, authorities had identified both dead, ruled Perdomo’s killing a homicide and Calihua-Mantiel’s death a suicide, and left many of the underlying details undisclosed. The next public milestone is likely to be any further release from state police or the medical examiner as the Hebron investigation is formally closed.
.