Family members of a Washington woman killed in Mexico last week are sharing details about her killing and the now-arrested boyfriend she was traveling with.
Sativa Transue, 26, was on her second day of vacation in Cancún, Mexico, when she began sending her loved ones concerning messages.
“[On Friday] she was messaging me, showing me the views, Snapchatting my daughter Amelia. She told me she wasn’t having the best trip, but she was enjoying the sun,” Sativa’s sister, Mykayla Bolieu, wrote on Facebook.
But that night Sativa texted her friends, alerting them that she’d been injured during an argument with her boyfriend and needed stitches, Bolieu wrote in a GoFundMe fundraiser.
Jason Transue, Sativa’s father, told Fox News Digital that his daughter’s boyfriend, 31-year-old Taylor Allen, had exhibited disturbing behavior before her death. Allen allegedly monitored Sativa’s cell phone and threatened to jump from their fourth-floor hotel room during Friday’s argument.
“I believe that’s when she told him that she wanted to leave, and I think that that’s why he was making these threats about trying to jump,” Jason said.
Hours later, Jason received a call from his ex-wife that Sativa had been found in her Cancún hotel “beaten to death,” according to the outlet.
Allen was taken into custody by Mexican authorities and charged with femicide, PEOPLE confirms. It was not immediately clear if he has entered a plea or retained an attorney.
In an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Bolieu said that her family sent a spokesperson to Cancún to identify Sativa’s body. Though authorities have not yet made any statements on a possible cause of death, the family spokesperson noted that she had several injuries consistent with being beaten.
Bolieu alleged in the interview that Allen had been abusive toward Sativa before their Thanksgiving vacation to Mexico. During a recent visit to Sativa’s apartment in Milton, Wash., Bolieu said she noticed holes in Sativa’s walls and broken items around the home.
She also said that Sativa told her Allen had been getting violent — and that after their trip to Mexico, she wanted to end things with him.
Stacia Shirley, former boss to both Sativa and Allen, told Fox News Digital that Allen was known to have a “ridiculous temper,” recalling a time that he allegedly got frustrated while building a desk for her and began smashing it to pieces with a mallet.
“When Sativa texted me and told me that [she and Allen] were dating, I was shocked,” Shirley said. “You couldn’t find two more absolutely opposite people. Sativa was just a ray of sunshine, just such a beautiful person.”
“People talk about someone being sunshine and rainbows, and that was exactly how she was,” Bri McMillen, Sativa’s friend and coworker, echoed to the Spokesman-Review. “There was never a bad bone anywhere in her body.”
Bolieu, who said she hasn’t been able to sleep since she found out about her sister’s death, told the newspaper, “I don’t want her to be remembered for her last moments or her relationship. I want her to be remembered because she was a good, loving person.”
Still, she has one plea for anyone suffering in a violent relationship: “Please get out before anything happens.”
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.