Mariana Cabrejo, 14, intervened in an attack that ended with her death and her mother’s inside their apartment.
TAMPA, Fla. — The decisive witness in Jean Pierre Ojeda Salazar’s murder trial described a 14-year-old girl entering a bedroom where her mother was under attack, an intervention that became the defining fact in a case ending with two first-degree murder convictions and life imprisonment.
Diana Calderon was living with Paula Cabrejo Molina and her two children when violence erupted at their apartment on Nov. 26, 2023. Calderon testified that she saw Ojeda Salazar stabbing Cabrejo Molina on a bed, according to the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office. Mariana Cabrejo came into the room to help her mother. Prosecutors said Ojeda Salazar then turned on the teenager. Calderon escaped to seek help, becoming the witness who could explain not only what happened but why Mariana was in the room when she was attacked.
That sequence gave the prosecution a clear human and legal center. The case was not presented merely as two people found mortally wounded in the same residence. Jurors heard that the second victim had knowingly entered danger because her mother needed help. Prosecutors used Calderon’s testimony to connect the killings and to argue that Ojeda Salazar made a separate decision to attack Mariana after she interrupted the assault. The jury ultimately convicted him of first-degree murder in both deaths, rejecting the defense argument that the episode was a domestic confrontation that got out of hand.
The attack occurred at The Lodge at Hidden River apartments on Riveredge Drive. At approximately 8:53 a.m., Tampa police received a call concerning a 14-year-old girl with serious injuries. Officers arriving in the 14000 block found Mariana and her 35-year-old mother with multiple stab wounds. Cabrejo Molina was pronounced dead at the scene. Emergency crews took Mariana to a hospital because she was still breathing when they reached her, but doctors were unable to save her. Police soon identified the adult victim’s boyfriend as the suspect.
The first official account was brief. Detectives said Ojeda Salazar fatally injured both victims after a verbal altercation with Cabrejo Molina. He then left in a white sedan and later abandoned it. The initial announcement did not contain the full testimony that jurors would eventually hear, the couple’s private messages or the prosecution’s account of Mariana’s intervention. Those details emerged through court proceedings over the next two and a half years, moving the case from an arrest report to a full reconstruction of the final minutes inside the apartment.
Evidence at trial showed that Cabrejo Molina was stabbed 18 times and Mariana four times. Prosecutors also introduced text messages that they said documented a failing relationship. The messages indicated that Cabrejo Molina wanted to separate from Ojeda Salazar, according to courtroom reporting. The state used those exchanges to place the argument in the context of a relationship nearing its end. Prosecutors did not need to rely on speculation about what occurred behind closed doors because Calderon said she had seen the attack and watched Mariana attempt to intervene.
Ojeda Salazar did not testify. His attorneys acknowledged to jurors that he was responsible for stabbing both victims, according to the state attorney’s account of the trial. The defense instead disputed the prosecution’s interpretation of the crime, arguing that the deaths arose from a domestic event that had escalated rather than from two first-degree murders. That approach narrowed the dispute. The jury was not being asked to choose between Ojeda Salazar and an unidentified assailant. It had to determine his intent, the nature of each killing and whether the evidence proved the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt.
The jury returned its verdict shortly before midnight on June 11, 2026. Both counts ended in findings of first-degree murder. The result confirmed the state’s argument that Mariana’s death was not an accidental consequence of the attack on her mother or a lesser homicide committed in confusion. Jurors found Ojeda Salazar criminally responsible at the highest level charged for both victims. That decision also opened a separate proceeding to determine whether he should receive the death penalty or remain in prison for life.
During the penalty phase, prosecutor Lindsey Hodges asked jurors to consider what Mariana had been forced to witness before she was attacked. Hodges described the teenager as having an immediate view of her mother’s suffering and emphasized that Mariana entered the room during the assault. The presentation gave the teenager’s conduct a second role in the case. It had helped explain the order of events during the guilt phase, and it later became part of the state’s argument about the severity of the crime and the punishment Ojeda Salazar should receive.
The jury declined to recommend death after about 90 minutes of deliberation. That decision did not change the guilty verdicts. It meant that Ojeda Salazar would receive life sentences rather than execution. The outcome reflected the two separate questions jurors had been required to answer: first, whether the state had proved two first-degree murders, and second, whether death was the proper punishment. They answered the first question in the prosecution’s favor and the second in a way that left him imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
State Attorney Suzy Lopez said the verdict held the defendant accountable for killing Cabrejo Molina and for murdering Mariana as she tried to protect her mother. Lopez said the deaths had permanently changed the family and described the verdict as a measure of justice. The statement echoed a point made throughout the case by prosecutors and the judge who handled Ojeda Salazar’s bond hearing: Mariana’s decision to intervene was not a minor detail. It explained how a dispute involving two adults became a double murder involving a child.
Ojeda Salazar was arrested quickly, although not in Florida. Investigators traced him to a home in Maryland after he left the apartment complex and abandoned the sedan. Members of a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force took him into custody on Nov. 27, 2023. He was held at a Maryland correctional facility while arrangements were made to return him to Hillsborough County. The arrest ended the immediate search for a suspect but began a court process that would require the victims’ relatives and the surviving witness to wait years for a verdict.
At a bond hearing the following month, Hillsborough County Judge Catherine Catlin heard testimony from a family friend and a detective. She refused to release Ojeda Salazar before trial. Catlin referred to evidence that Mariana had been killed while trying to protect her mother and concluded that the circumstances required continued detention. At that stage, the accusations had not yet been proven to a jury. The later verdicts established criminal responsibility, while the bond ruling explains why Ojeda Salazar remained jailed from his return to Florida through the trial.
The killings also left a younger child without her mother and sister. Friends and relatives told local reporters that Cabrejo Molina had come to the United States from Colombia seeking better opportunities for her children. Members of Tampa’s Colombian community gathered at a vigil after the deaths, mourning the mother and daughter and offering support to those who survived them. Their public remembrance presented the victims as members of a family and community, not simply as the two names attached to a criminal prosecution.
The courtroom outcome cannot answer every private question left by the killings. It does establish the legal findings: Ojeda Salazar murdered Cabrejo Molina, murdered Mariana when she came to her mother’s defense and fled Florida before his arrest. He now faces life in prison. Mariana’s final act, first described by a witness seeking help outside the apartment, remains the fact around which the trial, the sentencing arguments and the public understanding of the case were built.
Author note: Last updated July 15, 2026.