FORT LAUDERDALE — A family is in mourning after a mother was allegedly killed by the father of one of her children when he ran her down in front of a crowd of people in Pompano Beach on Saturday night.
Cellphone video captured the frantic moments after Brenda Hernandez Amaya, 29, was hit by a pickup truck allegedly driven by 32-year-old Edwin Amaya around 9:30 p.m. He currently faces a premeditated murder charge.
CBS News Miami spoke with Hernandez Amaya’s 10-year-old daughter with her father’s permission. CBS News Miami chose not to reveal her identity because of the events the young girl witnessed.
“I still can’t believe that’s true,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”
“He came… he was discussing my mom, then he went to the truck,” the daughter continued.
Omar Munguia, Hernandez Amaya’s ex-husband and the father of her two older children, told CBS News Miami that he was part of a group of people going out to dinner that night when Amaya allegedly showed up drunk and demanded to take the former couple’s two-year-old toddler with him.
He and Hernandez Amaya then argued, where she allegedly told Amaya that he could not take the boy.
“He said ‘I’m going to get my gun from the truck and I’ll shoot all of you,'” Munguia told CBS News Miami in Spanish.
Munguia said he tried to stop Amaya from getting into his truck but he fought back. He said Amaya allegedly scratched and kicked him before getting into the vehicle.
“He sped backward, he said he was leaving,” the daughter told CBS News Miami. “They believed him, that’s he put speed and he hit my mom.”
Munguia said he held onto Amaya again while at the steering wheel so he wouldn’t run away. He told CBS News Miami that Amaya then allegedly crashed into other vehicles in an attempt to run him over.
Hernandez Amaya’s mother, visibly devastated and puzzled, told CBS News Miami that she just wants her daughter back.
Munguia told CBS News Miami that he and the family are demanding justice.
“We want him to pay for what he did,” he said. “My children no longer have a mother because of him.”
Amaya is expected to face a judge on Monday. Meanwhile, Hernandez Amaya’s family is trying to raise money to send her body back to her home country of Honduras, where she will be buried.
