lit a candle 7h agoMy cousin lived two streets from Casa de Quesadilla and every visit to Atlanta started with her tamales, we'd sit there for hours while she checked on every table herself. 47. I keep thinking about that ditch by the Riverwalk, so so sad. Sending strength to her kids and grandkids.
Their story
Blanca Sauer was a 47 year old restaurant owner in Sandy Springs, Georgia, who for years ran Casa de Quesadilla, a small neighborhood restaurant on Dunwoody Place that she had built from the ground up. Family members described her as an entrepreneur, friend, aunt, mother, grandmother and daughter who never…
Blanca Sauer was a 47 year old restaurant owner in Sandy Springs, Georgia, who for years ran Casa de Quesadilla, a small neighborhood restaurant on Dunwoody Place that she had built from the ground up. Family members described her as an entrepreneur, friend, aunt, mother, grandmother and daughter who never gave up on her dreams, and friends and customers remembered her as a steady, hardworking presence in the metro Atlanta restaurant scene.
Sauer was originally from Mexico and had made her home in the Atlanta area, where she was known in her community as the face behind her restaurant. She was separated from her husband, Damon Sauer, who later spoke publicly about her death and helped organize efforts to bring her back to her home country for burial.
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024, a cyclist found Sauer's body in a ditch near Azalea Drive and Atlanta Street, close to the Riverwalk Trail along the Chattahoochee River in Roswell, Georgia. Investigators determined she had been shot and her body discarded near the trail, only about a mile from her restaurant. Roswell police quickly named her boyfriend, Roberto Dominguez Soto, 49, as the suspect and described him as armed and dangerous, but he could not be located and fled the country. Family members later said he had become obsessed with her, and that she had told loved ones she feared for her safety before she was killed.
The case remained open and unsolved for nearly two years. On October 11, 2026, the Roswell Police Department announced that it had closed the investigation after confirming that Dominguez Soto had died by suicide in Mexico in mid-2025. Working with federal and international partners, detectives verified his death and concluded that he had acted alone in killing Sauer, bringing a long-delayed resolution to a case that had unsettled her neighborhood and the local restaurant community for nearly two years.
Sauer's death drew an outpouring of grief from her community in late 2024, including a GoFundMe campaign organized by a friend, Erika Padierna, that raised thousands of dollars toward funeral costs and the expense of returning her to Mexico. Flowers and a handwritten sign reading that Casa de Quesadilla's owner had been taken from the community were left on the restaurant's door in the days after her killing, and the restaurant itself was later listed for sale.
Biography adapted from News reports and the sources cited on this page; death reported by Instagram.
Photos
1by People Forever
I remember those tamales too, she always came out to say hello