Mother Of Murdered Turkey Point Engineer To Killer, 'You Shattered My Life. My Pillowcase... Is Soaked With Tears'

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - A man convicted of stabbing a Turkey Point nuclear engineer to death in 2017 will be spending the next 25 years in prison.

Wednesday's sentencing was a formality. The defendant 23-year-old Alejandro Tapia had agreed to accept a substantial prison term with probation afterward.

CBS4's Peter D'Oench spoke to the victim's mother, Amparo Restrepo.

Restrepo says the savage murder of her son, Alexander Restrepo, 33, in 2017 has shattered her family.

She says he was a son with so much promise.

Wednesday was the day for the mother to speak out, as she confronted her son's killer.

"The stabbing of him... Look at me. Look at me," Restrepo yells at Tapia, who has just agreed to a prison term of 25 years, plus 10 years probation for killing her son.

"My pillowcase at night is soaked with tears. I lay awake for hours."

Alexander "Alex" Restrepo and his brother Christopher were stabbed multiple times after several men confronted them after a house party in October 2017.

"You were an exceptional human being my son you had great humor. You were the rock of this family. You had a productive and beautiful life and he had to end it."

Amparo Restrepo was inconsolable.

"I am not productive, I am not motivated, but the only reason I chose to live is because of my son Christopher and daughter Natalie."

After the hearing, I spoke with Amparo Restrepo.

"I took medicine just to be ready. Just to be able to be ready to express my bitterness to express my anger towards that monster because I wanted to look him in the face of that murderer. You are a sociopath. You killed a beautiful innocent man. He has shattered. He looked at me. Oh, man he looked at me and he did."

"He shattered my life. My family's life because I will never be the same."

Tapia could have been sentenced to life in prison as a result of the charge of 2nd-degree murder with a weapon.

So he agreed to the sentence.

He gets credit for time served, which means he'll still face 23 more years behind bars.

Judge Lourdes Simón urged Amparo Restrepo to keep going on with her son because it is what her son would have wanted.