Lizette Cuesta's Murder Suspects Arrested
Lizette Andrea Cuesta, 19, was still alive enough to name her attackers who reportedly beat and stabbed her on Tesla Road in California. Cuesta, who had crawled her way to the roadside, died two hours after arriving at the Eden Hospital in Castro Valley on Monday.
Cuesta managed to identify Daniel Gross, 19, and his girlfriend Melissa Leonardo, 25, in her last breaths. The Alameda County Sheriff announced on Twitter on Feb. 14 that both had already been arrested by the police on Tuesday morning and now are in custody at the Santa Rita Jail.
According to the Daily Mail, Alameda County sheriff's sergeant, Ray Kelly, said that the two were suspected to be friends with Cuesta. Investigations led to a theory that Cuesta had gotten into the car voluntarily with the two before she was beaten and stabbed multiple times. However, no motive has been identified yet with the alleged murder.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
According to the information provided in Cuesta's Facebook page, she used to live in San Jose, California before she moved to Tracy. Gross and Leonardo, on the other hand, are both from Modesto.
A neighbor of the suspected killers claimed that he had been having suspicions about the couple as their house had different people coming in and out, according to CBS Sacramento.
Several hours had passed before Cuesta was found, said the authorities. It was Richard Loadholt and his friend who found Cuesta out in the cold at around 2 AM. The two gave her a blanket while waiting for emergency response teams.
"I hope it will be encouraging to her family to know that their daughter did have that spirit to fight," Loadholt said, told the Daily Mail.
Although Cuesta's family had expressed their deep sorrows to the media, Cuesta's father, Ray, could not help but be proud of his daughter fighting through her life-threatening wounds.
"She was always a fighter. She was always brave, strong. She was a leader; a go getter," Ray Cuesta told the station on Tuesday. "I'm proud of her. She didn't give up. She won. She showed them."
