The girl was 13 when Yulima Romero was killed and 16 when she testified at Alberto Molinet’s murder trial.
MIAMI, Fla. — Three years after a 13-year-old girl called 911 as her mother lay fatally wounded inside the family home, she returned to the center of the case as a trial witness against her father, whose second-degree murder conviction has now resulted in a life prison sentence.
Alberto Molinet was sentenced Sept. 18 for the killing of his wife, Yulima Romero, after a Miami-Dade jury convicted him on July 16. The case was built around much more than the daughter’s testimony, but her presence connected nearly every phase of the prosecution: She witnessed the confrontation, called for emergency help, recorded portions of the aftermath on her phone and later testified about what she had seen. Prosecutors said those recordings and physical evidence corroborated her account.
The child’s role began during the early hours of Sept. 10, 2023, when a dispute between her parents escalated inside their Miami home. Police said Molinet took a .357 revolver from a safe and pointed it toward Romero. The gun initially was not loaded, according to investigators, and Molinet pulled the trigger without firing a round. Romero, frightened by the threat, went into a bathroom while Molinet loaded the weapon, police said.
Investigators said Molinet then fired through the bathroom door. The confrontation did not end there. Prosecutors said he got into the bathroom, struck Romero with the handgun and bit her. He fired another shot that hit her and caused her to fall, according to the state’s account. Before the fatal shot, prosecutors said, Molinet told Romero, “You’re not leaving here.” She was then shot in the chest and died at the scene.
The daughter’s cellphone captured part of what followed. In a recording later described during coverage of the case, the teenager can be heard speaking to Molinet in Spanish and accusing him of killing her mother. She warned that she would never forgive him if Romero died. Prosecutors also said Molinet forced the child to take photographs and video of Romero after the shooting, an allegation discussed in reporting on the sentencing hearing.
The girl called 911 after the gunfire. Police arrived around 1 a.m., found Romero dead and recovered the revolver. Molinet remained the focus of the investigation and was arrested later that morning. The teenager, meanwhile, was left not only as a surviving child in a homicide case but also as the only family member publicly described as having directly witnessed the entire confrontation between her parents.
By the time the case went before jurors in July 2026, the daughter was 16. Prosecutors said she testified about the killing despite a defense effort that sought to cast responsibility elsewhere. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said the defense tried to blame the child, making her testimony especially significant to the state’s presentation. Publicly available reports reviewed for this story do not provide a complete transcript of the defense argument, so its theory should not be described beyond what was reported from the proceedings.
The state sought to reinforce the teenager’s account with evidence that did not depend solely on memory. Prosecutors introduced videos from the child’s cellphone and photographs from the crime scene. They also called a medical examiner, identified by the State Attorney’s Office as Dr. Lew, who testified about Romero’s injuries. Prosecutors said the medical examiner showed how the revolver corresponded with a patterned injury to Romero’s head, supporting the state’s allegation that she had been struck with the firearm.
Jurors were also permitted to handle the revolver themselves. Prosecutors later said the gun’s weight helped undermine the defense theory. The significance of that demonstration was for the jury to evaluate along with the testimony, recordings and other evidence. After hearing the case, jurors returned a guilty verdict on one count of second-degree murder, accepting the state’s argument that Molinet was criminally responsible for Romero’s death.
The verdict did not immediately determine how long Molinet would spend in prison. That question moved to a separate sentencing proceeding before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Zachary James. The defense asked for 25 years, described in reporting on the case as the applicable mandatory minimum, and pointed to Molinet’s age and health. His attorneys cited conditions including diabetes and kidney disease in arguing that the court should not impose a life term.
Prosecutors urged the judge to focus on the circumstances of the killing. They said the argument that night began after Romero wanted a friend to visit and Molinet objected. The state characterized Molinet as controlling. The prosecution’s description of the dispute provided context for the confrontation but did not replace the physical and eyewitness evidence that had already persuaded the jury to convict him.
James rejected the request for the lower sentence and imposed life imprisonment. The decision transformed the July verdict into a punishment that, absent a later successful legal challenge or other lawful change, keeps Molinet in prison for the remainder of his life. News reports listed him as 73 when the sentence was imposed, while some later reports described him as 74.
The passage of time between the killing and the trial also changed the daughter’s place in the case. In 2023, she was a child speaking to emergency dispatchers and recording what was unfolding around her. In 2026, prosecutors asked her to recount those events in a courtroom while the defense challenged the state’s version. The prosecution highlighted her testimony after the verdict but also stressed that the jury saw evidence that could be compared independently with what she said.
That distinction was important because eyewitness testimony can be tested against physical evidence at trial. In this case, prosecutors pointed to the recovered revolver, the medical examiner’s findings, the photographs and the phone videos as separate pieces of the record. The state argued that taken together, they supported a consistent sequence: an unloaded trigger pull, Romero’s retreat to the bathroom, a shot through the door, a physical assault and the gunshots that followed.
Public reports do not state Romero’s age. They also do not provide a full transcript of the sentencing hearing or the trial, limiting what can responsibly be said about every argument made by the defense and prosecution. What is established by the reported court outcome is that the jury convicted Molinet of second-degree murder and James later chose life imprisonment over the 25-year term requested by the defense.
The daughter’s testimony therefore became one part of a larger evidentiary record rather than the sole basis for the verdict. Her recordings preserved some of the immediate aftermath, her 911 call brought police to the scene and her later appearance in court gave jurors an eyewitness account of the killing. The state then asked jurors to compare that account with the medical and physical evidence before them.
Nearly three years separated the first police response from the sentence that closed the trial-court phase of the case. In that span, an overnight homicide investigation became a murder prosecution, a teenage eyewitness became a trial witness and a disputed account became a jury verdict. The Sept. 18 life sentence marked the final step in that progression, with no later reported ruling identified that changed the outcome.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.