Police: Woman charged in death of man found beaten and burned in motel room

Four months after police found a man dead, burned and beaten in a Hollywood motel room, a 48-yearold woman has been arrested and accused of the killing, police said.

Hollywood Police officers arrested Rossemary Cruz-Buitrago on a warrant Tuesday. She is being held in the Broward Main Jail on one count of murder in the first degree.

The man was found dead on the afternoon of Feb. 19 on the floor of a room at a motel in the 2000 block of North Federal Highway, according to police. The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office determined he died from injuries all over his body.

The arrest warrant alleges Cruz-Buitrago killed the man “by inflicting blunt force trauma and burns to the head and body” and that the murder was premeditated. Court records show Cruz-Buitrago previously was convicted of a drug-related charge from 2018 and was arrested on felony charges three other times, but prosecutors dropped those cases.

A past boyfriend filed for injunctions against Cruz-Buitrago

in 2015, 2018 and 2020, writing in his petitions that she had beaten him and extorted him for money and that he lived with constant fear and anxiety because of their relationship.

The man wrote in one petition that he had gone into debt to “prevent her uncontrollable fits of rage” and that she would stalk him at his home, records say. He was granted an injunction but later filed for it to be dismissed.

In 2017, Cruz-Buitrago was arrested on a battery and domestic violence charge after the partner said she beat him. Officers found him lying on the ground and bloodied, records say. At the time, he still had a restraining order against her.

By 2018, the partner had again filed for an injunction against Cruz-Buitrago, writing in the petition he regretted asking for the last injunction to be dismissed. The man wrote that the two stayed in a motel in Port St. Lucie as Hurricane Irma was heading for South Florida in 2017 and woke up in the middle of the night to her beating him without a reason, court records say.

He was granted a permanent injunction that he again later asked the court to dismiss, writing in the motion that she had been sober for a year. The man last filed for an injunction against Cruz-Buitrago in 2020, and he received a temporary injunction that ended a few months later.

The name and identity of the man found in the motel room in February has not been released.