Stalker killed mother after Met police ignored daughter's repeated pleas for help
A coroner ruled Yolanda Saldana Feliz's death was preventable after the Met police failed to act on emails from her daughter Lauris warning of a violent stalker.
Met police ignored months of warnings before stalker stabbed mother 40 times
Yolanda Saldana Feliz was stabbed 40 times by Miguel Angel Florentino in the early hours of 23 October 2022, in a Stratford flat she shared with her daughter Lauris. The killing was preventable, the senior coroner for east London, Graeme Irvine, has ruled — had the Metropolitan police responded to Lauris's repeated pleas for help.
As theguardian.com reports, Irvine this month wrote to the home secretary, the Mayor of London and Met commissioner Mark Rowley, issuing a prevention of future deaths report that sets out a string of serious police failures in the months before the attack.
Lauris Saldana, who carries visible scars on her face, neck, arms and hands from the same assault in which her mother was killed, described Yolanda as a "good, good mother" with a kind heart who had worked as a care home nurse in the Dominican Republic. She spoke to the Guardian through a Spanish interpreter.
The two women had moved to London from the Dominican Republic in 2021 after Lauris married Florentino, then 38, who had been working in the city. By the time Lauris arrived, the relationship had already deteriorated. Florentino had a history of jealous rages, had been hospitalised in Spain for mental health reasons, and had been in trouble with the law in both the Dominican Republic and Spain.
Shortly after arriving, Lauris and Yolanda moved out of Florentino's accommodation and into a room in a shared flat in Stratford. Within a month, Florentino had obtained their new address. "This is where all the problems started," Lauris said. She was 31 at the time.
His behaviour escalated quickly. In March 2022, Florentino was arrested after threatening housemates with a knife; they had hidden in their rooms to escape him. After being released from custody, he returned to a mental health unit in Spain, then came back to London weeks later and intensified his stalking of Lauris.
"I remember I was very stressed out. I lost some weight and I didn't want to eat," she said. "On many occasions he took my phone and broke my phone."
In August 2022, he was arrested for harassment but released without being questioned. Over the following months he threatened Lauris, and physically assaulted and drugged her. "I was in fear because he was already threatening to kill me," she said. Yolanda began walking her daughter to the train station each day in an attempt to protect her; Florentino had also threatened Yolanda's life, convinced she was preventing Lauris from returning to him.
Lauris twice attended a police station in person after his stalking made it difficult for her to reach work, but was told on each occasion that she needed to contact a different officer. She sent emails to a police officer — none of which received a reply — describing being chased by Florentino, finding him waiting outside her door when she left for work, and having to hide from him in her own neighbourhood.
She attached screenshots of obsessive, paranoid and threatening messages he had sent from more than 24 different phone numbers, and included video footage of him chasing her — one recording taken only 11 days before the fatal attack. She urged the officer to help her obtain a restraining order or arrange his deportation to Spain, where he holds a passport.
Three weeks before the attack, in one of her final emails, she wrote: "I can't take it any more, please."
In the early hours of 23 October 2022, Florentino entered the Stratford flat through a kitchen door that could not be properly locked. He made his way to the bedroom where the mother and daughter were sleeping.
Lauris has only fragments of memory from that night. "I remember when he was killing my mother, my mother was really screaming very loudly, and [I was] as well," she said. She remembers being slashed with a knife while he held her by the neck on the floor. Her next memory is of him turning to leave, then coming back to kick her twice — once in the abdomen, once in the neck.
Yolanda Saldana Feliz died in the attack. Lauris survived.
Coroner Irvine's prevention of future deaths report, addressed to the home secretary, the Mayor of London and the Met commissioner, calls for the failures identified during the inquest to be addressed to prevent similar deaths in future. The Met has not publicly commented on the specific findings.
Source: The Sun