During what should be a time of celebration, a California family is mourning the loss of their 17-year-old daughter. On December 20, Azusa High School cheerleader Angelina Gonzales was found dead after police responded to a call about an assault with a deadly weapon.
Now that a suspected killer has been arrested, her family says the man responsible is someone they had warned her about spending time with on more than one occasion in the past.
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Gonzales was stabbed to death on Friday night.
According to what her family told CBS News, Gonzales’ ex-boyfriend picked her up from a cheerleading banquet that evening and never returned home. Her brother, Ruben Torres, told the outlet that everything seemed “normal” that evening, adding, “Nothing was out of the ordinary with her coach and team.”
Police didn’t identify the suspect at first, but the Los Angeles Country District Attorney’s Office later named him as 18-year-old Daniel Rodriguez.
A witness said she heard Gonzales screaming during the attack.
After going outside to see what was happening, the witness said they saw Gonzales laying on the ground as the suspect fled the scene. “He ran out with no shirt on. Got in his car, backed it up, almost hit the car behind him. I think they just, they were arguing,” the witness said.
ABC 7 reported that when Gonzales never came home that evening, a family member tracked the location of her cellphone, which led stepfather Robert Caraballo to the scene of the crime.
“When I got there, there was already crime scene tape up and forensics and all kinds of stuff,” Caraballo said. “And I ran up to the officers like, hey, my daughter’s in there. You know, my daughter is in there I’m trying to find her. She’s not home. And that’s when they told me, sit aside for a minute.”
Rodriguez was charged on December 24.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced that Rodriguez was charged with one count of murder after he allegedly stabbed Gonzales to death at his home. His bail has been set at $2,020,000, and his arraignment is January 8 — one day after what would have been Gonzales’ 18th birthday. He faces a sentence of 25 years to life if convicted.
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Gonzales' family had warned her to stay away from Rodriguez.
“She was just so loving, like, even in people like him. She tried to see the good in people,” Gonzales’ brother, Torres, told CBS News. “He took the most beautiful person in our lives from us.”
Gonzales’ mother, Leticia Caraballo, has set up a GoFundMe in the hopes of raising money for her funeral. “She had such a great future a head of her. She had a heart of gold. She was my perfect gorgeous Angel baby,” she wrote on the fundraiser page. “I don’t even have the words to say.”
Caraballo hopes that being open about his stepdaughter's death will prevent other families from experiencing something similar.
“No parent should bury their child,” he told CBS News at a memorial that was held for Gonzales on Monday. “I’m doing this because I want my daughter to be recognized, her legacy to be recognized and also for other teens that might be going through the same thing.”
