A 17-year-old girl, alone in her family's apartment with her 1-year-old son, is
attacked by a stranger. She puts up a fight but is overpowered, raped and stabbed to death. And the
suspect's girlfriend might have heard the attack as she listened in by cell phone.
That's the chilling story Austin police tell in the death of Bianca Maldonado, an LBJ High School student whose body was found Sunday morning by her mother and sister.
Police said Wednesday that they have arrested
Areli Carbajal Escobar, a 30-year-old man who lived a few buildings away from Maldonado at the Huntington Meadows apartments in East Austin. Escobar faces a charge of capital murder.
When police interviewed Escobar on Tuesday, he
had a 2 1/2-inch laceration on the back of his hand and scratches on his face and elbow, police said. He was arrested that day and was in the Travis County Jail on Wednesday without bail, records show.
Police said Maldonado fought to protect herself and her child.
"Bianca Maldonado, I think there is no other way to put it,
she put up a fight for her life," Lt. Mark Spangler said at a news conference Wednesday.
The child was taken to a hospital Sunday in critical condition but
has since been released, police said.
According to police, Escobar had invited his girlfriend, Zoe Lopez, to his apartment early Sunday but left while she was sleeping. He arrived at Maldonado's apartment a few minutes after her mother and sister had left at 3 a.m. to deliver newspapers, police said.
Escobar, who
did not know Maldonado, got into her apartment without forcing entry and
sexually assaulted and stabbed her, police said. The surrounding apartments were vacant.
Sometime during the attack, police said, Lopez realized that Escobar had left the apartment and noticed that his car was still in the parking lot. She called Escobar three times without getting a response, but on the fourth try, about 4:15 a.m., the line connected and
Lopez heard a woman moaning and screaming for about 10 minutes, police said. Lopez then sent a text message to Escobar's sister to report that she thought Escobar was having sex with another woman, police said.
Escobar's sister, Nancy Escobar, texted Lopez at 5:26 a.m. to say that Areli Escobar had
arrived at their mother's house with a bloody shirt.
The message also said the Escobar had said that he couldn't go to his home because someone might be looking for him, an arrest affidavit said.
At 5:45 a.m., Lopez sent a text message to her son that said, "
OMG, I think Areli raped someone," the affidavit said.
In text messages later that day, Nancy Escobar told Lopez that her mother had twice washed her brother's clothes and could not remove the blood from them, the affidavit said.
At 6:45 a.m., Maldonado's mother arrived home and found her daughter's body with multiple stab wounds, police said. There were large amounts of blood on Maldonado and in the living room, police said.
Lydia Escobar, another of Areli Escobar's sisters, said in an interview Wednesday that her brother had been living with her and Nancy Escobar at their apartment while he was separated from his wife. She said that when he came home Sunday morning, his back was hurting.
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