Brownsville, TX: Mothers of teen murder suspect, his slain ex-girlfriend attend hearing

September 15, 2011 5:45 PM
Laura B. Martinez
The Brownsville Herald
BROWNSVILLE — Former Lopez High School football player Javier de la Rosa appeared in court Thursday in yet another brief hearing on his upcoming capital murder trial.

De la Rosa, 17, is accused of stabbing Tiffany Galvan 48 times in August 2010. Her body was found in a remote area near Benavides Park on Browne Road just outside Brownsville.

As Lucy de la Rosa, Javier’s mother, walked into the courtroom, she blew a kiss to her son, who has remained jailed since his October 2010 arrest.

Maria Esther Galvan, Tiffany’s mother, sat waiting patiently in the courtroom to see how the trial was to proceed.

At Thursday’s hearing before 107th state District Judge Benjamin Euresti Jr., attorneys agreed they would present their lists of expert witnesses to each other over the next two weeks, indicating the trial could be coming up soon.

Outside the courtroom, Maria Esther Galvan said that although she wished the trial would move a little more quickly, she is pleased with the representation she is getting for her daughter.

“I am willing to wait. I have faith in my attorneys,” she said, declining further comment

State prosecutors said de la Rosa was spotted both at the scene and leaving the area where Galvan’s body was found. An indictment filed against de la Rosa states that in addition to stabbing Galvan with a “knife or an object unknown to the jury,” he tried to rob her and kidnap her as well.

While defense attorneys have painted de la Rosa as a simple high school student from a humble home, state prosecutors are portraying him as an egocentric young adult who was more concerned with himself than with his alleged victim.

Galvan met de la Rosa on an online social networking site, her mother said in an earlier interview. Her daughter had dated him for about four months before breaking up with him less that three weeks before she was killed, she said.

According to reports, Tiffany Galvan had written on her Facebook page two days before her death that she was having trouble with an ex-boyfriend.