A Hawaiian social media influencer and beauty entrepreneur was fatally shot in front of her daughter by her estranged husband, in what authorities are investigating as murder-suicide, police said.
Theresa Cachuela, 33, a mother of three and owner of House of Glam Hawaii LLC in Waipahu, was shot in the head and killed by Jason Cachuela, 44, in the parking lot of the Pearlridge Center on Friday morning, the Honolulu Star–Advertiser reported.
Her daughter witnessed the shooting and told police her dad pulled the trigger, according to KITV. The girl was reported by local outlets as being either 6 or 8 years old.
Jason reportedly shot himself shortly after fleeing the scene in a gray Mazda.
Police are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide, which occurred two weeks after a judge granted Cachuela’s petition for an order of protection against her estranged husband.
When police served Jason with the TRO, they recovered his five registered firearms, the outlet reported.
“Her youngest daughter is the one that tragically saw everything,” Cachuela’s mother, Lucita Ani-Nihoa, told Hawaii News Now. “She’s traumatized. She has so much faith, this little girl. She just … started praying.”
She added: “She doesn’t believe it. She doesn’t believe her mom is gone. I don’t believe it.”
According to the petition for the TRO, Cachuela threatened to kill himself in front of her, the Hawaii Tribune reported.
“He then took me alone to Waikiki and held a knife to his neck traumatizing me and scaring me,” she wrote, according to the outlet. “The next morning he showed up to my house early in the morning to apologize. I tried to help him and talk to him but he kept threatening to kill himself again.”
Cachuela’s mother described the tragic shooting on a GoFundMe page.
She said her daughter, whom the family called “Tita,” planned to have breakfast with her Friday morning.
“I wanted to give her and my grandkids their Christmas gifts,” Ani-Nihoa wrote. “My daughter did not deserve this. She was trying so hard to get help, but the Justice system failed her,” she wrote.
“We are so devastated with the loss of our beloved Tita. This has been so difficult for our family in which we were not prepared for,” the grieving mother continued.
“We are currently asking for donations to help cover any funeral expenses for Tita as we would like to give her the memorial she deserves to honor her memory and say our last goodbyes,” she added.
Ani-Nihoa said her daughter Cachuela told relatives she had been abused by her husband and filed the TRO due to his continued harassment and stalking, Hawaii News Now reported.
“She wanted to leave him but he wasn’t accepting it. He tried to control her with, with everything … where she would go what she would do,” Ani-Nihoa told the outlet, adding that her daughter had recently filed for divorce.
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