HOUSTON — The lady convicted of killing Tejano track legend Selena Quintanilla-Perez has been denied parole after spending a long time at the back of bars for fatally capturing the younger singer at a Texas motel in 1995, the state’s parole board introduced Thursday.
Yolanda Saldívar is serving a lifestyles sentence on the Patrick L. O’Daniel jail unit in Gatesville, Texas. A 3-member panel of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted not to unlock her. The panel mentioned her case can be eligible to be reviewed once more for parole in 2030.
The singer recognized to her fanatics as merely Selena used to be probably the most first Mexican-American citizens to make it into the mainstream track scene and used to be at the verge of crossing over into the English-language pop marketplace when she used to be killed.
Saldívar based Selena’s fan membership and have been the chief of the singer’s clothes boutiques, Selena And so on., till she used to be fired in early March 1995 after cash used to be came upon lacking.
Selena a Corpus Christi local, used to be 23 years outdated when she used to be shot within the again with a .38-caliber revolver at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995. She used to be ready to run to the motel foyer the place she collapsed, and he or she used to be pronounced lifeless at a clinic an hour later.
Motel staff testified that Selena named “Yolanda” in “room 158” as her attacker.
“I didn’t imply to do it. I didn’t imply to kill any one,” a sobbing Saldívar mentioned all the way through a nine-hour standoff with police. She advised police she had purchased the .38-caliber revolver to kill herself.
Greater than 50,000 other people covered as much as view Selena’s frame the day sooner than she used to be laid to leisure in Beach Memorial Park on April 3, 1995, simply 13 days sooner than her twenty fourth birthday.
Saldívar’s trial used to be moved to Houston on account of the exposure surrounding the case. Saldívar testified that she had meant to kill herself all the way through the war of words with Selena, however that the gun misfired.
On October 23, 1995, a jury in Houston convicted Saldívar of first-degree homicide. She used to be sentenced to lifestyles in jail with the potential for parole after 30 years.
Whilst in jail, Saldívar — a former nurse — bought her paralegal and affiliate diploma in legal justice and has filed a number of civil rights court cases alleging mistreatment by means of the state’s jail machine, in line with court docket data. She additionally helped different inmates to document petitions.
In court docket paperwork filed in 2016, Saldívar mentioned she used to be being held in protecting custody — that means she used to be segregated from different inmates — as a result of jail officers had been involved for her protection because of the “prime profile” nature of her case. She filed a number of appeals of her conviction however all had been rejected.
Selena — “the Queen of Tejano” — rose to stardom and received a Grammy all the way through a Tejano track growth within the early Nineties. Her hits come with “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” “Como los angeles Flor,” “Amor Prohibido,” “No Me Queda Mas” and “Tu Solo Tu.”
“Dreaming of You,” her English-language crossover album launched a couple of months after her dying, crowned the Billboard 200, and featured hits “I May Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You.” Jennifer Lopez performed the singer in “Selena,” a 1997 biopic.
The Grammys awarded Selena a posthumous lifetime fulfillment award in 2021.
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Observe Juan A. Lozano on X at juanlozano70
