Only on FOX: Kids Witness Mom's Murder
Children say dad fatally shot their mother
Updated: Monday, 22 Mar 2010, 8:56 AM CDT
Published : Saturday, 20 Mar 2010, 10:58 PM CDT
HOUSTON - It's a story you'll see Only on FOX: A child’s eyes aren’t supposed to see what 5-year-old Cassandra Castillo saw the night of Feb. 9 inside her southeast Houston home.
The little girl and her 4-year-old brother, Alejandro, were lying in bed with their mom, Monica Leija, when they say their father came in the room with a gun.
“My dad came up the stairs with his gun,” said Cassandra.
She says Juan Castillo, 29, whispered something into his common-law wife’s ear and then pulled the trigger.
“All of a sudden he shot my mom. She was asleep,” said Cassandra Castillo.
All the innocent little girl could do was cry.
“Cassandra’s father told her to go clean yourself off because your mom threw up ketchup on you,” said Adriana Hernandez, Leija’s sister.
According to the family, the couple had been together for seven years but had separated several times.
Hernandez says Castillo abused alcohol and her sister.
“Like the month before she moved back in with him, I asked her why did you go back, you all are going to kill each other, and sure enough. There are no words to explain what he did,” she said.
In a letter from Leija to Castillo dated May of last year, she begged him to change his violent ways even saying,“I try to make excuses for you and tell myself you wouldn’t do anything crazy to hurt us because you love us.”
Hernandez says the reason her sister stayed in the relationship was to give their children a home.
Now those very children are coping with losing both parents on the same night. Castillo is still on the run and Leija’s family fears he may have fled to his native El Salvador, though he does have family in Houston as well.
“I would say he did a wrong thing, but I want to talk to him, because when he did that I cried,” said Cassandra Castillo. “I miss her (my mother) a lot, she was the best to me,” she said.
If you have any information on this case please call Harris County Crimestoppers at 713-222-TIPS. Castillo was last seen in a 1997 green four door Infiniti I-30 with Texas license plates BC9R855.