Girl testifies illegal alien uncle slit her throat after he killed her mother in 2009 in Oak Cliff

An 8-year-old girl so tiny that her mouth was hidden by the witness stand testified Wednesday that she saw her uncle stab her mother moments before he cut the girl's throat.

The child spoke briefly in Spanish through an interpreter about seeing Edgar Murga kill her mother at their east Oak Cliff home in June 2009.

When asked if she saw her uncle in the courtroom, the girl initially said she didn't. But as she glanced around, she quickly looked away when she looked in the direction of Murga, who is charged with capital murder in the slaying of his 32-year-old sister-in-law, Alma Arenas-Perez.

When Dallas County prosecutor Kendall Castello asked the girl how she felt when she saw her uncle stab her mother, the girl replied that she was "sad."

"He stuck it in here," the girl said, pointing to her chest. "In my mother's chest."

Then, the girl told jurors, "he cut my neck and then he left."

She and her mother lay side by side on the bedroom floor, covered in blood, until the girl's stepfather, Jose Llamas Rodriguez, found them a few hours later.

"I couldn't get up," said the girl, who has a white scar on the right side of her neck.

Llamas Rodriguez testified that he had spent the night at his in-laws' house because he had been drinking and using cocaine with Murga during a family gathering there. Murga, who is married to a sister of Arenas-Perez, took Llamas Rodriguez's keys and told him he was too drunk to drive. Arenas-Perez had left with the girl and their 2-year-old son because she didn't want to be around them.

Murga, who was in the country illegally, initially went to sleep in the same house as Llamas Rodriguez, but authorities say that about 4:30 a.m., he woke up and went to the home of the victims. After the attack, they say, he returned to where Llamas Rodriguez was to give him a ride home.

Around 8 a.m., Murga dropped off Llamas Rodriguez at the house and told him: "I'll see you later so we can have some fajitas."

The front door was unlocked and Llamas Rodriguez began searching for his family. He went to his wife first.

"I touched her and she was already cold," said Llamas Rodriguez, who testified through an interpreter. "She wouldn't move."

At first he didn't know the girl had survived.

"I realized she was alive when I started screaming and she woke up," Llamas Rodriguez told jurors.

He called 911. Before help arrived, the girl told him that Murga was the one who stabbed them, Rodriguez testified.

"The only thing she told me was that it had been Edgar, that Edgar had come in," he said.

A Dallas Fire-Rescue firefighter-paramedic who took the girl to the hospital testified that he was shocked by the amount of blood he saw as he walked toward the bedroom.

"That's either a bright red room or that's a lot of blood," Justin Miller said he recalled thinking to himself. "This is not going to be good."

Then, when he saw the girl, "she looked dead."

Castello and co-prosecutor Brandon Birmingham told jurors in opening statements that Murga attacked his sister-in-law and niece "for reasons we may never explain."

Castello also told jurors that Murga had his sister-in-law's blood on his pants and shoes. While questioning a witness, Castello also indicated that skin from Murga's hand was found in the victim's teeth.

"He did not kill," Castello said. "He brutalized and slaughtered Alma."

Then, Castello told jurors, the girl "tried to run and so he grabbed her and he slit her throat and he left her for dead."

If convicted, Murga would automatically receive a life sentence because prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. They declined to comment while the trial is under way about why they chose not to seek a death sentence.

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