"She was a very beautiful girl," said Geraldo Matos. "I can't believe it. I need answers. I need justice."
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"We want to know what happened," Geraldo's wife Yolanda added.
A 911 caller reported their daughter, 20-year-old Christina Matos, missing on Sunday.
She was last seen alive on her birthday. She spent Friday night out celebrating with friends.
"I feel like it's a dream," her friend Camila Romero, who saw her just before she disappeared, said. "It hits harder when it's somebody that you're closer to, that you know of, that all she was doing was just working. If you meet her family, they've just been hard workers. They're immigrants, you know. We come here for a reason, to actually work."
She made it home to her apartment on the second floor of Signature 1505 on Hillsborough Street near NC State, but that was the last time anyone saw her alive.
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Body of 20-year-old woman found less than a mile from NC State in Raleigh; Death investigated as homicide
Matos' mother and father said The Signature was Christina's very first apartment. She shared it with roommates while she worked and took radiology courses at Wake Technical Community College.
The joyful, former athlete at Clayton High School had plenty of friends -- but when Raleigh police detectives called her parents, investigators began asking who might want to hurt her.
"(The detective) came back and said, 'Let me tell you something.' I asked if they found Christina. And he said, 'Yeah we found her.' And I was excited and where she was. And he said, 'I'm sorry guys, we found Christina in her room and she's deceased," Yolanda Matos recalled tearfully. "Everything is coming down in my life."
RPD discovered the body inside of her locked bedroom, only hours after her mother and brother had gone to check on her. Her mother had a key to get inside the apartment. But couldn't open Christina's locked bedroom door.
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"I want to scream! I want to yell. I want to yell, 'Why?' Christina, why to us?" Matos said. "We need justice. We need justice for Christina."
Monday night, Raleigh Police Department keeps a presence outside Christina's apartment building, which is filled with student residents from nearby NC State. Back at the downtown district precinct, homicide detectives are piecing together clues to find out who killed her and why.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the Raleigh Police Department at (919) 834-4357 or visit raleighcrimestoppers.org.
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