A former employee of Damian Valdez speaks about seeing him and visiting his house on the very day he shot El Taiger

The man, a Cuban national, was working on what appeared to be construction tasks at Damian's house.


A Cuban who was temporarily employed at Damian Valdez-Galloso's home to carry out some work saw him on the morning he shot El Taiger and may have been one of the last people to have contact with Damian before he fled.

"I last saw him around 10 or 11. He opened the door and left," said the man, who was not identified by name, in a statement to Univision.

An interesting fact shared by the interviewee is that Damian refused to let him work in the bathroom of his room.

"He told me I couldn't 'use' the bathroom in his room because he had a lot of money... 'Not because I have a lot of money there,' he says he told me."

To which the employee would have replied: “Well, brother, put it in the bank, or if you don’t want to, ‘I won’t do the bathroom for you.’”

When asked about Damian's personality, the former employee described him as a grumpy person in the mornings who became more relaxed throughout the day.

"It was a pitbull in the morning, relaxed for the most part around noon, and by the afternoon and evening, it was happy," he replied.

Finally, to the question that everyone seems to be asking these days, whether Damian truly had the strength to move the bulky body of El Taiger—something that the police do not doubt—the interviewee answered:

"There's a gym back there... but I don't know, because he would sometimes tell me that his arm was messed up."

Univision journalists, Javier Díaz and Mario Vallejo, stated that "the victim's friends do not believe that Damian had the strength to lift El Taiger into the vehicle by himself."

"I cannot say if he moved the body on his own, but later everything will be revealed," one of them, who preferred to remain anonymous, reportedly said.

The arrest report of Damian.

The Miami-Dade Police released the arrest report for Damian Valdez-Galloso, the sole suspect in the murder of Cuban reggaeton artist José Manuel Carbajal Zaldívar (El Taiger).

The document—though brief and with some gaps—specifies that El Taiger arrived at Damian's house at approximately 5:24 a.m. on October 3rd. The report does not detail the attitude the singer may have had upon arriving at the home of the now-accused or the nature of the exchange between them before the shot was fired.

The statement only reveals that from inside the house, Damian shot the victim in the forehead. Immediately afterward, the accused exited through a back door of the residence, dragged El Taiger's body by the ankles to a Mercedes Benz SUV, where he loaded it and left it there.

He then cleaned the crime scene and, after believing he had erased the main traces, changed his clothes and headed towards the vicinity of the trauma center at Jackson Memorial Hospital around 6:00 a.m.

The police received an emergency call made by Damian, and authorities arrived at around 6:45 a.m. Once on the scene, the police found El Taiger's body bleeding from the head near the intersection of Northwest 9th Avenue and 17th Street in Miami.

The reggaeton artist was transferred to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he remained in critical condition for a week before passing away on October 10, which triggered a wave of shock and mourning among his fans.

This Wednesday, Damian arrived in Miami extradited from New York, and on Thursday, he made his first appearance in the Miami-Dade criminal court before Judge Mindy S. Glazer, who denied him bail.

Valdez-Galloso faces three charges: second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and possession of a firearm.

Damian, 49 years old and known as "El Narra," was scheduled to appear in court on November 8 for the sexual abuse charge against him and for violating registration requirements with the authorities related to that offense.

However, he did not appear, as reported by Teresa Padrón, manager of El Taiger, who has expressed her indignation at Damian's demeanor in court this Thursday, where he was seen with a cold expression that in no way indicated remorse.

According to Teresa, the next court date for Damián Valdez-Galloso will be on November 22, when he must appear before the judge handling the murder case.

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