Vigil Held for Teen Whose Body Found at Construction Site

Miriam Vasquez said she wishes she could go back to her last moment with her daughter, Tiffany Cabreja

The mother of a teen whose body was found over the weekend at a southwest Miami-Dade construction site said at a vigil Monday night that she's been crying since she learned of her daughter's death.

Miriam Vasquez said she wishes she could go back to her last moment with her daughter, Tiffany Cabreja.

"I saw her [last] Monday," Vasquez said. "She was at home watching TV like a normal teenager."

Seven days later, Vasquez stood only feet from the construction site where police say a man driving a commercial truck dumped her daughter's dead body early Saturday morning.

"I am going crazy thinking about her. She was the only child, only child that I had," she said.

Cabreja's body was found in the area of Southwest 288th Street and 144th Avenue, according to Miami-Dade Police.

Officials said they first received the call when witnesses reported a body falling out of a commercial truck going eastbound on Southwest 288th Street as it made a left turn at Southwest 144th Avenue.

"The subject stopped the vehicle, got out and picked the female back up and put her back inside the car," said Miami-Dade Police Det. Robin Pinkard.

The man then continued northbound on Southwest 144th Street, police said.

When officers responded to the area, they found the Cabreja's body at a nearby construction site, according to authorities.

Witnesses also told police there may have been a toddler in the truck when the driver took off, police said. Officials confirmed the toddler did not belong to the victim.

The Medical Examiner's Office has yet to release a cause of death.

"She was a normal kid, a teenager," father Domingo Cabreja said Sunday. "She was attached to me, I miss her."

"They say they kill her some place and they dumped her there," Cabreja said police told him.

Her father believes the man behind the wheel is a friend of his daughter's. In fact he says the teen last saw him on Friday, when that friend picked her up at her Homestead house, in another vehicle.

"She come back, she changed her shoes, she leaves here, and then she don't come back. She said she was going to go to the store and she don't come back," her father said.

Joalmis Ortega came to Monday's vigil with tears, and questions about her childhood friend's final moments. She wondered who Cabreja could have become.

"I think she wanted to be, you know, an actor person. Like someone who wanted to be big," Ortega said. "She always had the mind of being someone big."

The truck was described as a white commercial truck with a caged bed and black lettering on one side. Anyone that may have seen it is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477).

"They need to get him. They going to do it to someone else. They did it to her, they could do it again," Cabreja said.

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