A Texas mother found the lifeless body of her teenage daughter inside their home after she did not show up to a Christmas parade, while police are investigating the case as a capital murder.
Lizbeth Medina, 16, was found unresponsive in the apartment she shared with her mother Edna, Texas on Dec. 5, after she didn’t show up to a Christmas parade earlier that afternoon.
Emergency responders were called to the apartment at 6:57 p.m. to provide medical services but pronounced Medina, Edna High School cheerleader, dead at the scene.
When she did not see her daughter with the rest of her cheer squad at the parade, Jacqueline Medina knew something was wrong and immediately rushed home.
“Once I found her, I realized she was gone,” the distraught mother told KAVU-TV’s “Crossroads Today.” “Words can’t explain what I felt at that moment finding my daughter in the matter that she was. All I can say is that I hope with all my heart that there is justice for my daughter.”
The gruesome discovery left the mother to believe she was murdered by someone.
“There was no laced drugs, there was nothing like that. My daughter was found in a way that no mother should ever find their child,” Medina said. “Someone hurt my child, someone took my child from me.”
Medina believes her daughter’s death was linked to a recent break-in that occurred at their Cottonwood Apartments unit a couple of weeks ago.
“She was just in her own home, and they broke in, and unfortunately she was home at the time,” she told the outlet.
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Investigators have not revealed any information on what the crime scene looked like nor if there was any sign of struggle.
She slammed the rumors and misinformation being spread online that claimed a suspect was already in police custody as they were “ruining the investigation that’s still ongoing.”
“I want the murderer of my daughter to be found and caught and put behind bars.
Jacqueline Medina remembered her daughter as a “special little girl, loving, kind and bighearted.”
The mother-daughter duo has only lived in the small Texas city located 100 miles southwest of Houston for roughly a year, KHOU reported.
The Edna Police Department provided an update on their investigation late Thursday, saying they are working “diligently” alongside the Texas Rangers ‘to locate and bring to justice the individual responsible.”
The police department asked the community to remain vigilant as the suspect was still on the loose but won’t be providing too many updates to keep the integrity of the investigation.
“We ask you to join us in continuing to lift this family up in prayer,” Edna Chief of Police Rick Boone said in a statement.
Lizbeth Medina’s aunt set up a gofundme by asking “the community for help to not only get Justice for my sweet Lizbeth” and provide support to the family as well.
