Lisset Perez had not yet turned 15 when she broke up with her boyfriend, a man six years her senior who had lived in her family's apartment.
Lisset's new start did not last long. Early Thursday morning, her estranged and jealous boyfriend, Adalberto Torres, 21, gunned down Lisset and her mother outside her Hialeah apartment, where they waited for her school bus.
An hour later, Torres killed himself in the Miami efficiency he just rented a few days before.
"How do you explain or rationalize something like this: a 21-year-old gunning down a young girl and her mother? It's a waste and a tragedy," Hialeah Police Chief Mark Overton said.
He called the crime scene "as horrific as it comes." The bodies of Lisset and her mother, Vivian Albelo, 39, lay under police tarp in an open area at the Water View Villa complex for hours. An early morning rain sent blood streaming into puddles of water.
Police didn't know how many bullets were shot. Some hit parked cars. The rain may have washed others away. It is not known what kind of gun Torres used.
Before their breakup, Torres and Lisset — nicknamed "Chai" — lived together in her family's apartment for two years.
"My aunt accepted the situation, so Chai wouldn't move away," said Yunerkis Aguilera, Perez's cousin. "My aunt did not want her to date him."
The shooting echoed another crime of passion in Hialeah at the popular eatery Yoyito Cafe-Restaurant. There, an estranged husband stormed the restaurant in early June, killed his wife and three other women, left three more women badly injured, then shot himself a few blocks away.
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