"Mami help me, he just shot me": a young Latina calls for help in Texas and her boyfriend grabs the phone and says: "I'm going to kill her"

Stephanie García, 23, was shot to death by her partner, who later took her own life, in the house they shared in Texas, according to her relatives, who received a desperate call at dawn but did not arrive in time to save her.

García had been in a relationship with his aggressor for four years, according to his grandmother, María de Jesús Gaytán, in an interview with Telemundo 60. The family had detected signs of physical violence, but she refused to abandon him.

"He said he loved it," lamented the grandmother. 

Stephanie García in a photograph shared by the family.

Telemundo 60

In the early hours of April 6, the young woman called her mother asking for help: "Mommy, help me, he just shot me," says the grandmother who said to the phone.

Garcia tried to calm her mother down by saying that she was fine but she was scared because she was bleeding from her leg.

At that moment he snatched the phone from her.

"I'm going to kill her now," she said. 

When the family arrived at the home, located in the city of Converse, northwest of San Antonio, the place was cordoned off, because she had managed to call the police.

The family watched as she was carried out on a stretcher seriously injured, but she died at the hospital.

The case was classified as femicide-suicide, said Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar.

Agents received an alert at 1:15 a.m. of a woman asking for help after being shot.

"They returned the call, a man answered and verified that he had actually shot a woman inside the residence and that her intention was to shoot him again and then commit suicide," Salazar said, according to local media KSAT12. 

Officers heard gunshots upon arrival at the scene, so they forced their way inside.

They found García on the bathroom floor with multiple wounds, and his boyfriend next to him, shot to death.  

The man was identified as Ardel Julius Couch, 26 years old.

Stephanie did not manage to survive the gunshot wounds.

She “she hurt him a lot.

She was too beaten, she had many blows, bullets in each arm and in her feet and in her stomach”, her grandmother recounted.

On more than one occasion, Couch had broken the young woman's cell phone.

The family had also seen signs of physical violence.

“When I asked her, Stephanie, why do you put up with it so much, she told me 'I want it,'” Gaytán said.  

But they never thought that such a situation could occur, that the young woman was going to be killed by the person she loved the most, she added: "He's a damn, he's a dog.

He left my girl very beat up.”

The grandmother said the family is devastated but wanted to share the story to raise awareness and help others experiencing violence. 

According to the National Latin@ Network, one in three Latinas will experience intimate partner violence at some point in her life, and one in 12 has been a victim of abuse in the past year.

Violence against women can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender identity, economic status, or sexual orientation, but there are free resources for anyone who needs help.

If you suffer from this violence or know someone who is going through a problem of this type, you can contact National Domestic Violence for free to get help and advice in Spanish in three ways: by calling 1 800 799 7233, entering the online chat or by texting “START” to the number 88788. On its website, meanwhile, there is information to identify signs of abuse either in person or digitally.

You can also consult resources at the local level by state and city and for different types of situations in an online search engine.