Jurors convicted Jean Pierre Ojeda Salazar of murdering his girlfriend and her 14-year-old daughter inside their Tampa apartment.

TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing his girlfriend and her 14-year-old daughter during a confrontation inside the family’s apartment, where prosecutors said the teenager was attacked after entering a bedroom to protect her mother.

Jean Pierre Ojeda Salazar, 27, was sentenced after a Hillsborough County jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Paula Cabrejo Molina and her daughter, Mariana Cabrejo. The verdict resolved a case that began with an early-morning emergency response in November 2023, continued with Ojeda Salazar’s arrest in Maryland and ended with jurors rejecting the death penalty. Because the jury did not recommend death, the convictions carried life sentences, closing the trial phase nearly three years after the killings.

The central evidence came from Diana Calderon, a friend who lived at The Lodge at Hidden River apartment complex with Cabrejo Molina and her two children. According to the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office, Calderon told jurors that she saw Ojeda Salazar attacking Cabrejo Molina on a bed. Mariana entered the room and tried to defend her mother. Ojeda Salazar then attacked the teenager before Calderon fled the apartment to seek help. Her account gave jurors a direct description of the violence and of Mariana’s attempt to intervene.

Tampa police were sent to the 14000 block of Riveredge Drive at about 8:53 a.m. on Nov. 26, 2023, after receiving a report that a 14-year-old girl had suffered multiple stab wounds. Officers found the teenager and her 35-year-old mother inside the residence. Cabrejo Molina was pronounced dead at the apartment. Mariana was still alive when first responders arrived and was taken to a hospital, but she later died from her injuries. Police initially described the attack as following a verbal dispute between Ojeda Salazar and the adult victim.

Trial evidence provided a more detailed account of the confrontation. Prosecutors said Ojeda Salazar used a kitchen knife to stab Cabrejo Molina 18 times and Mariana four times. Text messages introduced in the case showed that the adult relationship was deteriorating and that Cabrejo Molina wanted to leave him, according to courtroom reporting. Prosecutors presented the killings as deliberate acts committed after the argument, while the defense acknowledged that Ojeda Salazar caused both deaths but argued that the episode was a domestic confrontation that had spiraled out of control.

That defense did not persuade the jury. After hearing testimony and reviewing the evidence, jurors returned guilty verdicts shortly before midnight on June 11. The verdicts were for first-degree murder in both deaths, a significant change from the charges listed immediately after Ojeda Salazar’s arrest. Tampa police initially announced one count of first-degree murder with a weapon, one count of second-degree murder with a weapon and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors ultimately secured convictions on the more serious charge for each killing.

The case then moved to a penalty phase because prosecutors had sought the death penalty. Jurors heard additional arguments about whether Ojeda Salazar should be executed or spend his life in prison. Prosecutor Lindsey Hodges focused part of the state’s presentation on what Mariana experienced before she was killed. Hodges told jurors that the teenager had witnessed her mother’s suffering at close range and then became a victim herself when she tried to act. The argument placed Mariana’s actions, rather than the defendant’s future, at the center of the state’s request for punishment.

Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes before declining to recommend death. Florida law requires a qualifying jury recommendation before a judge can impose a death sentence. Without that recommendation, life imprisonment became the available punishment for the first-degree murder convictions. The result spared Ojeda Salazar from execution but ensured that he would not be released. The life sentences also brought a measure of legal finality to a case that had required relatives and friends to revisit the events through hearings, testimony and the penalty proceeding.

State Attorney Suzy Lopez said the verdict held Ojeda Salazar responsible for killing a woman and a teenage girl who had tried to protect her. Lopez described the case as heartbreaking and said the outcome delivered a measure of justice for relatives whose lives had been permanently changed. Her office’s statement emphasized Mariana’s attempt to help her mother, a fact that also shaped the judge’s comments during an earlier bond hearing and became one of the defining elements of the prosecution’s case.

After the killings, Ojeda Salazar left the apartment complex in a white sedan, police said. Investigators later found that vehicle abandoned. Detectives determined that he had traveled to Maryland and was staying at his brother’s residence. The U.S. Marshals Capitol Area Fugitive Task Force arrested him on Nov. 27, one day after the mother and daughter were killed. He was first held in Maryland while awaiting transport to Florida, where a judge later ordered him detained without bond pending trial.

At the December 2023 bond hearing, a family friend and a detective testified about the case. Hillsborough County Judge Catherine Catlin rejected the defense request to set bail, saying the circumstances showed that Ojeda Salazar should remain jailed. The hearing occurred before the evidence had been tested at trial, but it established that prosecutors intended to rely on an eyewitness who said Mariana had entered the confrontation because she was trying to save her mother. The court’s detention order kept Ojeda Salazar in custody throughout the prosecution.

Outside the courtroom, the deaths affected Tampa’s Colombian community and the victims’ surviving relatives. Friends and community members gathered for a vigil in December 2023, remembering the mother and daughter and supporting the family left behind. Local reporting said Cabrejo Molina had moved from Colombia to the United States in search of a better future for her children. She also had a younger daughter, who was 4 at the time of the killings. The trial’s outcome could not restore the family, but it answered the criminal charges that followed the attack.

The prosecution did not depend on proving an unknown attacker’s identity. Ojeda Salazar’s lawyers told jurors that he was responsible for the stabbings, leaving the jury to decide his level of criminal responsibility and whether the killings met the legal requirements for first-degree murder. The state relied on the eyewitness account, physical evidence, the number and location of the wounds, the couple’s messages and Ojeda Salazar’s departure from Florida. Jurors accepted the prosecution’s position that the deaths were first-degree murders rather than a lesser form of homicide arising from an uncontrolled argument.

Ojeda Salazar’s life sentences mark the end of the guilt and penalty proceedings in Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Any later challenge would occur through the appeals or post-conviction process, but no release date accompanies a life sentence imposed for first-degree murder. Cabrejo Molina and Mariana remain the focus of the case’s public record: a mother killed inside her home and a daughter who died after trying to reach and defend her.

Author note: Last updated July 15, 2026.