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

Lauris Saldana says she is ‘not even half of what I used to be before’ the attack. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

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.