Dunn — Police are searching for a man whose wife was shot outside a Dunn hospital Saturday night. An Amber Alert issued for two of their children was canceled Sunday morning.
Azucena D. Diaz, 28, of Autryville, was shot in the head and chest in the employee parking lot of Betsy Johnson Regional Hospital at about 8 p.m., according to Dunn police.
Diaz is an employee at the 800 Tilghman Dr. hospital. She was treated in the emergency room and later airlifted to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill where she was listed in critical condition.
Diaz’s estranged husband, Joaquin Rangel Ramirez, 31, is wanted in connection with the shooting, police said. Ramirez is described as a Hispanic man, 5 feet 6 inches tall, 150 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.
At the time of the shooting, he was wearing a blue and yellow jacket, police said. Ramirez left the scene in a vehicle believed to be a white pearl 2002 Cadillac Escalade with white rims, tinted windows and North Carolina license tag number VZT9795.
He is considered to be armed and dangerous. An Amber Alert was issued for two of the couple’s children, Maren Rangel and Briana Ramirez.
The children were unaccounted for and thought to be with Ramirez. He had made threats to harm himself and the children, police said.
The children were found unharmed at an undisclosed location at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Ramirez is urged to call the Dunn Police Department at 910-892-2399 or 910-892-2345.



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To prevent jeopardizing an ongoing investigation (see N&O report), the police are not revealing all its information. There is at least one person who believes that if the police failed to personally tell him all the evidence, such evidence does not exist. Such delusional grandiose!
November 11, 2007 6:31 p.m.
November 11, 2007 3:57 p.m.
November 11, 2007 3:23 p.m.
By the way, you bet my heartstrings are tugged. Children this age are DEFENSELESS against a crazed adult. So be it if I want to worry about their safety. That doesn't make me less aware of facts. If people are emotionally void about every little injustice, nothing will get done either.
November 11, 2007 3:15 p.m.
http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/nismart2_nonfamily.pdf
In that study, there were some 58,000 children reported missing in the study year, of which about 3,600 can be classified as truly missing having been abducted by strangers with only 115 fitting the classical definition of kidnapping.
That's about one kid per county per year in the US. That's pretty rare.
But that doesn't make for headlines which does not increase readership or viewership for news organizations so you won't hear the true facts.
November 11, 2007 2:10 p.m.