Missing Man Found Dead; Family to Hold Viewing on Sunday

The family of Manuel Enrique Diaz Gomez will hold a viewing from 2-4 p.m. and from 7-9 p.m. on Nov. 13 at Collins Funeral Home in Silver Spring.

Gomez, 37, was reported missing Oct. 31.

Gomez was staying with family friend Ursula Laureano in Silver Spring just before he went missing, but had been living on Easecrest Drive in Wheaton a few months earlier.

Gomez’s mother and one of his brothers traveled from the Dominican Republic, his home country, for the funeral, Laureano said. Another brother came down from Montreal, Canada. Gomez’s son and ex-wife live in New Jersey.

Laureano said Gomez was like a brother to her and a “hard-working, friendly person.”

Bruce Schaefer, who lives in the same Wheaton neighborhood as Gomez did, remembers meeting him when Gomez came over to his house and asked if Schaefer would sell him his motorhome. But when Schaefer opened the hood for Gomez and saw all the rust inside, he was too embarrassed to sell it.

“I told him he could have it,” Schaefer said. Gomez brought a mechanic friend over to fix it up. “Within a couple of days he had it running beautifully.”

Schaefer said that Gomez would drive the motorhome into D.C. when he worked graveyard shifts for a contractor, doing work in Metro tunnels. Instead of driving home again, he would spend the night there in the motorhome.

But what Schaefer remembers most was how friendly and outgoing Gomez was with people in the neighborhood, which led to various landscaping jobs. “He would just walk up to people and start talking,” Schaefer said.

Schaefer said that Gomez had started a foundation in the Dominican Republic to bring money to rural schools.

Father Jacek Orzechowski of St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring also remembers Gomez talking about his work in the Dominican Republic. “He felt very passionately about helping other people,” Orzechowski said.