A 22-year-old mom living in Dallas, Texas, was killed just two weeks after she spoke publicly about danger she was facing.
Abigail "Abby" Saldaña posted to Instagram, warning other women to be careful after finding a location tracker attached to the bottom of her car. Her mother, Jessica Contreras, says her daughter had concerns she was being stalked prior to finding the tracker.
Contreras says she told her daughter to go to the police. She wasn't sure if Saldaña had followed through when she got the call that her daughter had been shot and killed.
Abby Saldaña was originally from Wichita Falls. She'd moved to Texas with her now 5-year-old son two years ago. She worked two jobs, as a bartender and an eyebrow aesthetician.
According to Saldaña's mom, Jessica Contreras, she'd had the feeling someone was following her. She had started paying more attention to her surroundings, which is how she discovered a location tracker attached to the bottom of her car. She shared the discovery to Instagram, where she warned other women to be careful.
"This was literally on my car like this," Saldaña said in the video, showing the underside of the car.
"This is why you have to be careful. I don't know what to do moving forward with this. But this definitely looks like a tracker to me."
Police have confirmed they're investigating the tracker as part of the murder investigation.
"There is a tracker on this vehicle that we have identified," Fort Worth police officer Tracy Carter told NBC DFW.
"We don't know how long that tracker has been on. That's something our detectives are looking into."
On Tuesday, October 26, Saldaña was alone when she was driving down a Fort Worth highway, Amon Carter Boulevard, just south of Highway 183. A 911 caller reported a car speeding down the highway before veering off the road into a grassy area and crashing. Police found Saldaña in the car, dead from gunshot wounds.
Police were led to arrest 54-year-old Stanley Szeliga, though the motive and connection between the two remains unclear.
"When I got the phone call about the arrest this morning, with all the hurt you get a little bit of peace," Contreras said of the news.
"He can't hurt anyone and he's going to have to answer to me why he took my daughter. And I'm not going to stop. I will fight and I will fight. He took my pride. He took my joy."
Some reports indicate that Szeliga, a software engineer, was stalking and harassing Saldaña after possibly being a client of hers or related to one. It's believed she had taken photos of his car and written down his license plate number shortly before her death.
When police arrested Szeliga, he was found with "several self-inflicted cut wounds." He is being held on $250,000 bond.
"Her not being here, her son without a mother, that's the hardest part every day," Contreras said of life without her daughter.
