MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — An 11-year-old girl lived a horrific nightmare while living in a house near Redondo Elementary School in Homestead, records show.
It took more than two years, after her father’s murder and her mother’s deportation, for Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office detectives to uncover it, records show.
On June 10, Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge William Altfield issued a warrant for the search of the house and the arrest of Christian Heras, the girl’s second cousin, who also lived at the house. Here is the timeline of the girl’s suffering and the MDSO homicide and special victims bureau detectives’ investigation as described by the arrest warrant: MDSO detectives believe Heras, then 28 and 29, sexually abused the girl for months before killing her father and threatening to kill her mother in 2024.Detectives learned that before the murder, the girl’s father was concerned about Heras “always trying to be alone” with her, so he asked the girl’s mother to “not let” him be with her “without supervision.”Detectives learned that after the girl’s father confronted Heras and asked him to avoid getting “too close” to his 11-year-old daughter, Heras showed him “a handgun to scare him.” On Dec. 16, 2024, Homestead Police Department officers and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel responded to a report of a fatal fall in a house’s backyard near Northwest 10th Avenue and 12th Street. MDFR personnel declared the girl’s father dead, HPD asked MDSO to take over the case, and a homicide investigator reported the girl’s father had suffered a “compound skull fracture, which exposed his brain.”The homicide investigator, who was wearing a body camera and taking pictures, found what appeared to be blood on a ladder and on a cement garden brick that “had several strands of hair on a corner.” The girl’s mother told detectives that when Heras showed her the body covered with palm fronds, facing upward on the ground, with a ladder on top, he started “screaming profanities” at her dead husband, and later said dogs were “licking the blood on the cement brick.” Heras and the owner of the house, Heras’s mother, Angelica Medina, told police and detectives that the girl’s father had a drinking problem, and Medina said he would get so drunk that he “would climb up” the ladder to “have sexual intercourse with trees.” On Jan. 28, 2025, the medical examiner’s office reported the victim was “bludgeoned to death, and that it appeared that the homicide scene was staged.” On Feb. 5, 2025, the medical examiner’s office released a toxicology report showing the victim “did not have any alcohol or drugs in his system at the time of his death.” During the MDSO homicide investigation, the girl’s mother moved out of the house in Homestead and traveled to Dallas, Texas, with her kids to live with her husband’s family.On Feb. 14, 2025, a detective who traveled to Dallas and interviewed the girl reported she “exhibited signs of possible sexual abuse” and recommended a specialized forensic interview.
On March 10, 2025, the medical examiner’s office reported that the girl’s father’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and determined that the manner of death was a homicide.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported the girl’s mother to Mexico after she was detained on May 26, 2025, in Dallas.
On June 6, 2025, the girl was the subject of a “video-recorded forensic interview” at the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center and said she had told her mother that Heras confessed to killing her father, and gifted her a cell phone that her mother then threw away.
The girl did not disclose the sexual abuse until 2026.
On Feb. 13, the girl’s relatives reported that she said Heras had molested her in Homestead, so a MDSO detective decided she needed to undergo a second forensic interview.
On May 13, the girl’s aunt told a detective, who was trying to schedule the second forensic interview, that on Jan. 22, the girl told her that she had been the victim of a sexual battery in Homestead.
On May 21, a detective with the special victims bureau and a homicide detective were with the girl when she participated in a “video-recorded forensic interview” at the Kristi House Children’s Advocacy Center in Miami-Dade County.
The girl described how Heras “didn’t care” if she was in pain when he sexually battered her more than five times, and she did not report it “because she was scared and did not trust anyone.” On Thursday morning, MDSO deputies were searching the house in Homestead when they found Heras at a window “trying to flee,” and he “tensed his body” while they handcuffed him, according to the arrest report.At 8 a.m., on Thursday, detectives arrested Heras at the office of the MDSO special victims’ bureau, at 1701 NW 87th Ave., according to the arrest report. Miami-Dade corrections booked Heras at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where he remained without bond on Friday afternoon, according to county inmate records. Heras faced charges of first-degree murder, five counts of sexual battery on a minor by an adult, and resisting arrest without violence, according to court records. Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Marcus Bach was set to preside over the case.
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