HAINES CITY — Three of Yahorany “Nani” Popoca’s siblings staggered through the parking lot outside a Mexican restaurant Monday afternoon, their expressions both sorrowful and dazed. Reaching the parking space where their youngest sister had been fatally shot two days earlier, the siblings crumpled in unrestrained agony. Alicia Popoca wailed loudly, calling out repeatedly in Spanish.
The siblings violently sobbed, leaning against each other for support. Esmeralda Popoca knelt before a small shrine of devotional candles, a stuffed elephant, flowers and balloons, abject grief distorting her face. Amid the devastation and pain, Nani Popoca’s family members also projected anger.
They say that law enforcement and the legal system failed to protect Nani, a 29-year-old mother of six, from a man who had stalked, harassed and threatened her for weeks before allegedly shooting her multiple times as she sat in her car. Fearing the worst, Nani had obtained a protective injunction against the suspect, Rolando Guevara Zarate of Arcadia, just six days before police say he murdered her. “There was nothing stopping him, not even the injunction, not even the restraining order,” said Mauricio Popoca, Nani’s older brother.
“Nothing was stopping him. I mean, they (police) overlooked that, and they really overlooked a lot of things. It’s just — the system failed her.
The system just failed her completely.” with first-degree murder, alleging he shot Popoca several times at ab.