A South Florida social media influencer and her mother are working through the emotional and physical scars left after they were allegedly attacked by the influencer’s former stepfather.
“I just said, ‘How sad, that these are the last minutes of my life,’” Eixchel Berroteran, known as Eixchelb to her 4.3 million TikTok and 650,000 Instagram followers, told our sister station Telemundo 51 in Spanish in tears. “I felt so bad for my mom; I was saying, ‘God, please.’”
Berroteran, who is originally from Venezuela, refers to the moment she says 64-year-old Luis Damas, who was married to her mother for 13 years, arrived at their Miami apartment unannounced intending to kill them both.
Damas has been separated from Berroteran’s mother, Francys Damas, for eight months.
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According to an arrest report, it was Aug. 21 when Damas knocked on the door. His ex-wife had a friend over and told him she'd contact him later, but a few hours later, as the friend was leaving, Damas was in the hallway outside the apartment.
The suspect and his ex-wife started to argue, and Damas started yelling and asking where Berroteran was located, saying "she was the reason they could not be together," the report said.
Francys Damas said the suspect pushed her into the apartment and pulled out a gun, saying he was going to kill Berroteran, the report said.
Luis Damas made his way to a bedroom where Berroteran was and pointed the gun at her, and she jumped off the bed and tried to hide under a mattress as Damas said "I'm going to kill you" and fired one shot, missing Berroteran, the report said.
“He starts to point the gun at me. I throw myself on the floor and start to yell at him to please not do anything,” Berroteran remembers, as her mother grips her shoulders in support. “And in a matter of seconds I hear the gunshot that, I’m not exaggerating, was centimeters away from me.”
According to authorities, Berroteran tried to hide under a mattress as Damas said "I'm going to kill you" and fired one shot, missing her.
“Eixchel kept screaming, ‘Help, help, help!’ Both of us, very loudly. And he’d say, ‘Shut up, shut up, because if the police get here, this is over… I came here to die,’” Francys Damas said.
The mother describes how she wrestled with her ex to defend her daughter while he accused Berroteran of being the reason they separated.
“He grabs her by the hair and throws her against the floor. I’m sitting on top of him, that’s why I have several bite marks on my stomach,” Francys Damas said, while raising her shirt to show the bruises. “I ask the authorities that this not go unpunished, that the full extent of the law has to be felt here, because we’re talking about it, but there’s many women that have not been able to.”
Francys Damas pleaded with her ex-husband to calm down, and he started to, but kept a hold of Berroteran by her hair and placed the gun under his thigh while sitting on a couch, the arrest report said.
The suspect allegedly agreed to sit and talk about the incident, then demanded Francys Damas help him clean up the scene in the apartment. According to authorities, he had her sweep and mop the floor and collect evidence from the scene and put it in a garbage bag.
Luis Damas left the apartment as his ex-wife "advised him she would walk him out in an attempt to make him feel reassured that she was not going to contact the authorities," the arrest report described.
Francys Damas said they went to the hospital and waited until the next day to contact police, because her ex-husband threatened to have them killed by hitmen if they called authorities.
The women say they’re terrified.
“The same way he threatened to kill us and tried to do it… we don’t know if he really knows bad people who could try to hurt us,” Berroteran said.
Damas was later arrested on charges including attempted murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, burglary with assault or battery, attempted tampering with physical evidence, false imprisonment, and felony battery.
He appeared in court on Saturday where he was ordered held without bond.
"Today I can tell you that trauma hurts more than physical injuries, and that I really don't know how I will ever overcome this nightmare," Berroteran wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. "I ask that you pray a lot for us and that justice is served. On my part I promise you that when I manage to heal even just a little… I will become the voice of all the people who have been victims of abuse, abuse and in this case..almost murdered."
