ORLANDO, Fla. – Documents obtained by News 6 reveal new details in the death of a 15-year-old girl whose body was dumped along a residential street.
Investigators said Melanie Medina suffered a fatal gunshot in April in an accidental shooting, and they arrested Ramsys Cruz Abreu, 23, charging him with manslaughter.
According to a new investigative report, Medina packed all of her belongings in a container and snuck out of her home the night of April 10.
Her mother told investigators her daughter was rebellious, and she had removed her from middle school to send her to Costa Rica to live with her father.
According to the report, it appears Medina did not want to go.
Her 16-year-old friend, whose identity has not been made public, told investigators she and Medina had been intimate with each other, and she loved her.
She said Cruz Abreu picked them both up on the night of April 10, and he brought them back to his apartment where they cleaned up illegal drugs and paraphernalia. She said he was afraid someone had reported his activity, and he feared police were going to conduct a raid on his apartment.
Afterward, she told investigators, he drove them to another apartment, where he was going to sell drugs. She told investigators he gave her a gun and told her to shoot if she felt she needed to.
The friend said they left the complex and drove to Krispy Kreme Donuts near the Mall at Millenia, and that is where she said the gun slid out of her lap. She said when she grabbed it, the gun fired.
Investigators said the bullet traveled through the front seat of the car, where the friend was sitting, and hit Medina in the left side of her torso, cutting two main arteries.
She told investigators she asked Abreu to take her to a hospital, but he refused.
Instead, the pair dumped her body along Ziegler Road in Orange County, and the girl told investigators Cruz Abreu drove her home.
Abreu told police he drove to Poinciana, where he threw his cellphone in a lake.
According to the report, 10 days after Medina's body was found, a man in Polk City contacted authorities reporting he had found a large plastic container on his property with women's clothes inside. He said he rummaged through it and found Medina's middle school identification card.
He said he searched her name on the internet and found out she was the victim of a homicide. That is when he called authorities.
Abreu was arrested and charged with manslaughter, failure to report a death and tampering with physical evidence. He's being held in the Orange County Jail on $11,100 bail.