Who is Victor Penalba? Hialeah, Florida Man Murders Wife, Daughter and Son

Victor Penalba is a Hialeah, Florida man who murdered his wife, daughter, son and then himself over the weekend.

Miami-Dade Police received a call requesting a welfare check on the family that lived in a unit at the Royalton on the Green Apartments at 17400 Northwest 68th Avenue.

Officers responded Sunday night and noticed a four odor coming from the apartment, officials said.

When they went inside the apartment, they found four people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.

The victims were a 60-year-old man who appeared to have shot and killed his 50-year-old wife, their 18-year-old son and their 13-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself.

Whilst authorities have yet to formally identify the victims, family confirmed to NBC Miami that the perpetrator is known as Victor Penalba.

The wife was known as Yumara Martinez whilst the kids were Jason and Stephanie Penalba.

Victor Penalba worked for the sanitation department in Hialeah but lost his job a few weeks ago.

Family members said the couple has been together for 20 years on and off but were not legally married.

Yumara’s brother, Juan, described Victor as controlling and super jealous.

“He snapped, this guy was super jealous,” he said.

“Super dominating. Wanted to control (everything). His kids feared him…Who would’ve thought this guy was capable of killing his children, killing himself, killing my sister,” he said. “I don’t understand this,” he said.

Juan Martinez said his nephew, Jason’s friends had alerted police after not hearing from him for days.

He said he received a cryptic message from Jason about two weeks ago that set off alarm bells.

“According to the detective, he tells us that my nephew mentioned to, I believe it was his friend or his girlfriend, a week before the 29th, that said ‘if you don’t hear from me in four to five days something bad happened,'” Martinez said.

“Why would he say that? It leads me to believe that the father was threatening them.”

Martinez said the family knew his sister and Penalba had separated but there was talk of them getting back together. He said the family disapproved of that but said no one imaged he was capable of something like this.

“I know my sister broke up with him on and off a few times and she found this apartment, she was living with two kids,” Martinez said.

“I guess he fell on bad luck and he lost his job with Hialeah water department and he cried to her and she gave him a chance to come live with her and help her pay the bills and she paid a heavy price.”

It’s currently unclear when the shootings actually happened and how long the bodies had been in the apartment before being found but some estimates point to at least two weeks.

Martinez commented on that as well: “We are shocked. We don’t understand how nobody heard the four gunshots, nobody heard of smelled anything until yesterday,”

Hialeah is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States.

With a population of 223,109 as of the 2020 census, Hialeah is the sixth-largest city in Florida.

It is the second largest city by population in the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida, which was home to an estimated 6,198,782 people at the 2018 census.

It is located west-northwest of Miami, and is one of a few places in the county—others being Homestead, Miami Beach, Surfside, Bal Harbour, Sunny Isles Beach, and Golden Beach—to have its own street grid numbered separately from the rest of the county (which is otherwise based on Miami Avenue at Flagler Street in Downtown Miami, the county seat).

The city is notable for its high Hispanic proportion, which at 97% is the second-highest proportion of Hispanic Americans of any city in the United States outside of Puerto Rico, and the highest proportion among incorporated communities outside of Puerto Rico.

Hialeah also has the highest percentage of Cuban and Cuban American residents of any city in the United States, at 84.1% of the population, making them a prominent feature of the city’s culture.

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