Man implicated in Melani García femicide released without notifying her family
Nearly three years after the murder of the teenager in Havana, one of those detained was freed due to "illness". The family was not informed.
Impunity in the Melani García case: one of those implicated freed without notifying the family
Nearly three years after the femicide of teenager Melani García Lorenzo in Havana, one of three people implicated in the crime has been released without any trial taking place, according to 14ymedio.com. This is Pedro Tomás Serrate, father of the young woman's ex-partner, who was seen by the victim's relatives walking through the streets of the Cuban capital in recent days.
The news was originally published by CubaNet and replicated by the Gender Observatory Alas Tensas (Ogat). The release came as a surprise to both Melani's family and her own defence lawyer.
"My husband sees him and tells me, so I call where I used to live and they confirmed it for me. The next day, immediately, I went to the Prosecutor's Office to ask them why they had released him and what the justification was, because I couldn't believe it," said Yanet Lorenzo Villalba, mother of the murdered minor.
The authorities justified the measure as "a matter of illness" and told her that the precautionary measure had been modified. Lorenzo Villalba rejected the explanation: "I don't understand what the illness is. For me, he shouldn't be on the street because he was also implicated in my daughter's murder."
The lack of notification also reached the family's lawyer, who found out about the release through the victim's own mother. According to Lorenzo Villalba, the family's defence believes that the Prosecutor's Office had an obligation to inform them of the decision.
The woman also noted that she was told that the case file would be sent to the General Prosecutor's Office to evaluate the request for sanctions, which according to the authorities was "very high". "I don't know who to turn to and it's been almost three years and this isn't over," she lamented.
The release of Serrate has intensified the family's fear for their safety, particularly for Melani's younger son. "I'm afraid because that family, as you can see, is no good at all and is a potential danger to my grandson," warned Lorenzo Villalba, concerned about the possibility that the man could harm the child or try to take him away.
The crime: a teenager beaten to death in Arroyo Naranjo
Melani García Lorenzo was 16 years old when she was murdered between 15 and 16 December 2023 in the La Palma neighbourhood, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. The person primarily responsible for the crime, identified as Pedro Julio Serrate Corrales, had been her romantic partner. According to a report filed by Alas Tensas at the time, the femicide perpetrator had at least two accomplices, including his father—now released—and Frank Mario, cousin of Julio Pedro.
On the night of the crime, Melani had gone out towards her brother's house, who was suffering from fever and epileptic seizures. Hours later, the mother received a call alerting her that her ex-partner had taken her away by force. "At one in the morning on 16 December they call me and tell me that Pedro Julio had beaten her out of the house and taken her away in the rubbish truck," Lorenzo Villalba told CubaNet.
The family began searching for her immediately. The mother went to several police stations, but at different locations officers told her they were busy attending to cases of theft and drugs. It was only at the Capri station that she found an officer willing to take the report, although the process continued to be delayed until the mother herself mentioned the rumour that her daughter might have been murdered.
Melani's body was found in the house to which a patrol finally went. "They had left her inside the house, lying down; she was already dead," her mother recounted. The Medical Examiner determined that the young woman died at six in the morning as a result of the blows she had received.
A repeating pattern: 53 femicides recorded in Cuba in 2025
Ogat emphasises that the judicial delay in Melani García Lorenzo's case is not an exception within Cuba's justice system. The Cuba Observatory on Gender Equality (Ocig), linked to the National Office of Statistics and Information and the Federation of Cuban Women, reported that 49 women aged 15 and over were victims of murder for reasons of gender in cases tried during 2025.
In March, Ogat already warned about "the dire situation faced by children, adolescents and older adults in the current context of humanitarian crisis in Cuba, which is also evident in femicides".
In 2023, the year Melani was murdered, independent observatories documented 90 femicides, the highest annual figure recorded since monitoring began in 2019. For the current year, 14ymedio.com's count records 53 femicides in Cuba. The most recent case is that of Nilda Díaz Santana, 58 years old, who was shot at when she tried to defend her daughter from an assault.
An analysis by type of femicide verified in 2025 by Alas Tensas reveals that 83.3% of the murders recorded correspond to crimes committed by the victims' partners. "The persistence of gender violence in the context of intimate relationships as the principal scenario of risk is confirmed," the organisation states.
Ogat concludes that "the marked concentration of intimate partner and ex-partner femicides indicates that the home and intimate relationships continue to be spaces of high vulnerability, in a context where unequal power relations persist and where institutional mechanisms for prevention, protection and care are insufficient or non-existent".
The observatory maintains that "reporting these crimes makes it possible to break institutional silence, preserve the memory of victims, identify patterns of violence and demand measures of prevention and protection".
Source: Google News CU — La Habana