The family of Celeste Rivas Hernandez has broken their silence following the arrest of singer D4vd on suspicion of her murder.
The 21-year-old has been under investigation for months after Hernandez’s remains were found in a Tesla registered to him in September.
Los Angeles police said on April 17 that the singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, was being held without bail on suspicion of murder.
Hernandez’s father, Jesus Rivas, said, ‘Thank God … justice for Celeste,’ after hearing news of the singer’s arrest, according to a statement family attorney Patrick Steinfeld provided to TMZ.
The teenager’s cause of death remains unknown. She was last seen by her family in April 2024, when she went missing from her hometown of Lake Elsinore.
The then-13-year-old had said she was going to watch a movie, but never returned home.
In a previous statement, LAPD’s Captain and Commanding Officer Scot M. Williams told People: ‘We know for sure that Celeste Rivas Hernandez died and someone placed her body in the front trunk area of David Burke’s Tesla.’
‘We know that the Tesla had been parked at the location from which it was towed for several weeks, so it is very likely Celeste Rivas Hernandez had been dead for several weeks prior to her body being discovered.’
The Tesla was found abandoned at a tow yard last year, after employees complained of a foul smell coming from the car.
Police investigators are reported to have found a cadaver bag containing a head and torso, as well as a second bag with other body parts inside, according to court documents.
Court documents also show authorities had given her age as 14 when she was killed, after she was identified through forensics.
The Houston-born singer was escorted in handcuffs away from his Hollywood Hills home on Thursday.
Police shouted ‘surrender’ over a loudspeaker upon arriving at D4vd’s home, according to a neighbour who spoke with The California Post.
The LAPD commanding officer of the robbery-homicide division, Captain Scot M. Williams, said: ‘We came to the home with a probable cause arrest warrant for him.
‘We did the best we can to keep tabs on him, but once we developed probable cause to arrest him for murder, then we were on him pretty diligently.’
Before Rivas was identified as the body in the car, the teenager was described as having wavy black hair, 5 feet 2 inches tall, and weighing 120 pounds.
She was found wearing a tube top, black leggings, a yellow metal bracelet, and metal stud earrings. She also had a tattoo on her right index finger that read: ‘Shhh…’.
The teenager’s mother previously told TMZ that her daughter had a boyfriend named Dave before her disappearance.
Rivas, from Lake Elsinore in California, a city 68 miles from Los Angeles, went missing aged 13 in April 2024, according to a missing person flyer cited by CBS.
According to the Los Angeles Times, police sources ‘indicate[d]’ that the teen had been living with Burke after going missing.
Her brother, Matthew Rivas, previously told NBCLA that the family was aware she knew the singer, and that before she went missing she told the family that she was going to see a movie with Burke.
D4vd, known for viral songs such as Romantic Homicide and Here With Me, has not personally commented on the allegations, but his lawers told PBS: ‘Let us be clear — the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death.’
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