The eighth-grader’s body was bloodied and lifeless, discarded on the side of the road like the empty liquor bottles and used condom found nearby. Her mother hadn’t seen her for 24 hours and was “just about to call emergency 911” when deputies arrived to tell her that her daughter was dead.
Now, more than 400 pages of court documents in the case against an Orlando man accused in the April 10 death and disposal of 15-year-old Melanie Mesen Medina reveal some details about the final hours of her life.
Melanie was found fatally shot the morning of April 11 off Ziegler Road in a neighborhood near Orange Blossom Trail, investigators said.
Prosecutors say Ramsys Cruz Abreu, 23, is to blame because he gave a handgun to a minor who accidentally shot Melanie the night before. He is charged with manslaughter, failure to report a death, interfering with a dead body and tampering with physical evidence.
Though Cruz Abreu faces prosecution, the 17-year-old girl who allegedly shot her is not charged. The Orlando Sentinel is not naming the girl, because she’s a minor.
Paranoia
The evening Melanie died, the 17-year-old friend sneaked out of her home and Cruz Abreu and Melanie picked her up, according to reports. Though Melanie had only met Cruz Abreu days before, her friend said Melanie was living with him because she’d been kicked out of her house.
Her mother said she “had no idea” Melanie had gone.
The friend told investigators Cruz Abreu was paranoid, asking the girls to help clean his apartment because he feared law enforcement was coming to search for drugs, according to documents.
Later, the girls went with Cruz Abreu as he sold drugs from his car. Counting his money from a deal, Cruz Abreu told the 17-year-old girl to grab a gun from the back seat in case someone tried to rob them, she told investigators.
Sitting in the middle of the back seat, she fumbled with a gun case before resting the firearm on her right thigh, she told investigators during a video reenactment.
When she leaned over to close the case, the handgun slipped off her leg.
As she tried to catch the falling firearm, she accidentally squeezed the trigger, she said in the video. The bullet tore through the passenger seat, striking Melanie in the neck.
She said she screamed as Melanie bled, and Cruz Abreu told her to hold Melanie as he drove, according to court records. Cruz Abreu told detectives the 15-year-old was dead by the time he passed through two traffic lights on John Young Parkway.
“I just tried to help a girl and as soon as she brings her friend into this, she just turns my whole little world around,” Cruz Abreu told investigators. “And I, in a matter of a second, I didn’t have any control over any of this.”
The friend said she asked Cruz Abreu to take Melanie to a hospital or pull over so she could call an ambulance, but he refused, according to documents. Instead, they dumped her face up on the side of the road where she was found the next morning.
Afterward, Cruz Abreu told the friend to get into the front seat where Melanie had been, then he drove to a 7-Eleven, the girl told investigators. The 17-year-old washed the blood off her hands in the store bathroom and gassed up Cruz Abreu’s car before he dropped her off near her home about midnight.
The girl told investigators she tried to burn her blood-stained clothes in her backyard the next morning, but stopped when she thought her mother would catch her. She hid the half-singed clothes in her mother’s car so she could secretly throw them away, but investigators found the clothes days later when they came to her house.
Surprising discoveries
That evening, a detective went to Melanie’s house to confirm her identity and tell the family she’d died. Melanie’s mother, Maria Medina-Solorazano, said she was “just about to call emergency 911” because she hadn’t seen the girl since 9 p.m. the night before.
She told the detective she’d figured Melanie left that morning to say goodbye to a friend. The mother said she was sending Melanie to live with her father in Costa Rica because “she was not able to control her,” according to a report.
The teen’s bedroom was empty. All of the clothes were missing from her closet and dresser, and her bed was neatly made.
In photographs from the scene, a few school notebooks and notes remained in her room, including a doodle of the friend’s name next to “I love you” and “my woman” written in Spanish.
Medina-Solorazano “looked surprised” to see the room empty and said Melanie must have packed and left without telling anyone, according to court documents.
After learning of her daughter’s death, she told a detective she was was “confident” Melanie’s 17-year-old friend had been with her before she died. Medina-Solorazano said the girl was a negative influence on the “very rebellious” Melanie, according to documents.
The same night, investigators got an anonymous tip from a tattoo artist that led investigators to Cruz Abreu. The tipster feared Cruz Abreu was a flight risk after confessing to what happened to Melanie, according to court documents.
When asked to comment last week, Medina-Solorazano said she was not ready to speak about her daughter’s death.
Investigators found Melanie’s belongings in a rural area near Polk City two weeks after she died when a man hauling dirt in the area reported coming across a large plastic tub and a suitcase full of women’s clothes and shoes, according to a report.
Among the items was Melanie’s Corner Lake Middle School student ID, so he called police.
Cruz Abreu is scheduled to next appear in court in September. His trial is set for December.
cdoornbos@orlandosentinel.com, 407-650-6931 or @CaitlinDoornbos
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