On April 6, 2019, Dias Diego Hernan, a 34-year-old man, disappeared from the routines that anchored his work life in west Alabama and nearby Mississippi, and by the time anyone realized he was missing, the story was already turning grim. The next morning, after he failed to show up at the Mississippi chicken processing plant where he was employed, his boss reported him missing.
Not long after that, a driver traveling along a rural stretch west of Tuscaloosa dialed 911 with a shocking report: a man had been found shot in the middle of Pickens County Road 2, near the Aliceville area. Authorities identified the victim as Hernan, and the quiet backroads of Pickens County became the center of an expanding homicide investigation.
Investigators began stitching together Hernan’s last known movements by tracking the loose ends left behind. One of the most telling clues surfaced miles away: his vehicle was discovered abandoned in the parking lot of a Walmart on Highway 82 in Northport, and investigators reported there was blood inside. With the car separated from the body and the scene offering more questions than answers, state and local investigators worked leads across communities, trying to determine who had last been with him and why he ended up dead on an isolated road. Early on, local officials publicly described the case as an active search for whoever killed him, underscoring both the fear running through nearby communities and the uncertainty surrounding motive at the time.
The case ultimately narrowed to a single suspect: Zocimo Hernandez. Authorities said Hernandez was interviewed by investigators with the help of an interpreter, and during that interview he confessed not only to the killing but also to stealing Hernan’s vehicle. Investigators later reported that the handgun used in the murder was recovered near Hernandez’s residence in the Moundville area, further anchoring the confession to physical evidence. What began as a roadside discovery and a missing-person call hardened into a prosecution built around that confession, the stolen car, and the recovered weapon.
In May 2021, prosecutors said Hernandez pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for Hernan’s killing. Under the terms described by authorities, Hernandez would be required to serve 15 years in custody before becoming eligible for parole, and upon completion of his sentence he would be subject to deportation. With that plea and sentence, the case moved from an anxious, unsolved homicide on a rural road to a resolved conviction—one shaped, according to prosecutors, by a dispute between two men who knew each other that escalated into fatal violence.
