‘I begged for help’: the police failings that led to UK mother’s death at hands of her daughter’s stalker

Yolanda Saldana Feliz was stabbed 40 times by Miguel Angel Florentino, after Lauris Saldana’s emails to Met police went unanswered Lauris Saldana has visible scars on her face, neck, arms, hand – and many, many more hidden beneath her clothing. They are a reminder of the horrific attack in 2022 at the hands of her ex-partner that she narrowly survived, an attack in which her mother, Yolanda Saldana Feliz, was killed. It was an unlawful killing that would have been preventable, a coroner ruled, had the Metropolitan police taken Lauris’s domestic abuse case seriously. Had they come to her aid when she repeatedly begged them for help with evidence her estranged husband was a violent stalker, her “superhero” mother would probably still be alive today. Earlier this month, the senior coroner for east London, Graeme Irvine, wrote to the home secretary, the mayor of London and Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, issuing a prevention of future deaths report highlighting a string of serious police failures that led to Yolanda’s killing at the hands of Miguel Angel Florentino. Lauris met Florentino in her home country, the Dominican Republic, when she moved into an apartment owned