The father of a Florida teenager who murdered his own mother broke down in tears after being told of his son's heinous crime. José Antonio Rosa was dealt the devastating news while sitting inside a police cruiser after his son Derek, 13, murdered his own mother Irina Garcia in October 2023.
Derek, who is now 15, stabbed her over 40 times with a kitchen knife as she lay in bed, while his newborn baby sister lay in a crib just feet away. He admitted second-degree murder earlier this year and was jailed for 25 years.
Prior to being told of what his son had done, José described his son as being caring and intelligent before a detective told him that his son was a 'person of interest'. According to footage obtained by NBC, the detective said: 'She was stabbed, we don't know the exact amount, but from what we got from patrol there was a knife involved.' The elder Rosa started sobbing with his hand over his face as he began hyperventilating.
'There's no way, Derek loved his mom to death. He's happy that his sister was born. He didn't want to leave his mom's bedside at the hospital. He was so happy about it,' José said.
José told investigators that he had spoken about gun safety in the past but had never taken him shooting before. He said: 'But he knows more about guns from those games than from anybody telling him about it.'
Detectives also spoke with Frank Ramos, Derek's stepfather, who was interviewed separately inside a police cruiser. Ramos told police that he was out of state at the time of the killing but kept in contact with Garcia while working as a truck driver. He said that he spoke with Garcia over the phone before noticing Derek leaving their apartment and then part of his subsequent call to 911. After hearing the call, he tried for hours to contact Derek and his mother, before he eventually found out she had passed.
'I can't understand how he did that to his mother. Honestly, I can't. It's something I just can't believe. The only thing I see is that he has a big obsession with guns,' which he later said was normal for a teenager. On Derek's relationship with his mother, he said: 'That was the greatest love in the world. She didn't deserve that.'
Derek confessed to the brutal killing in the immediate aftermath and described how he tried to target his mother's arteries. That confession was played out in court earlier this year where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by 20 years on probation. 'I woke up, I grabbed one of the kitchen knives and I went to her room... I killed her,' the teen said in the video.
Prosecutors alleged that Derek was driven to kill and to share photos with his friends by a fascination with violence. After the murder, he took photos of his mom's lifeless body and sent them to a friend, prosecutors said. He even told the same friend over the phone that he had killed her. A selfie of Derek shortly after the incident showed the teen making a shaka hand gesture with a completely blood-covered hand.
Derek was arrested late in the evening of October 12 after the then 13-year-old called 911 to his family's Hialeah apartment. Detectives found a blood-spattered kitchen knife with a purple handle in the family's apartment after Garcia was found dead.
