Mystery of haunting ‘voice in rubble’ heard crying in Miami condo collapse is solved almost a year after 98 died

THE mystery surrounding a woman who was heard screaming in the rubble after a Miami condo collapsed has been solved.

Music executive Theresa Velasquez, 36, was visiting her parents when the Champlain Towers’ South tower block in Surfside fell to the ground on June 24, 2021, killing 98.

Crews tried to rescue Velasquez, of Los Angeles, from the rubble but she was found dead on July 8.

A Miami-Dade Fire Rescue memo from April 25, which was obtained by CBS Miami, revealed that officials thought teenager Valeria Barth, 14, was the woman in question before it was confirmed to be Velasquez.

Initial reports appeared to suggest that the voice said she was in unit 204, but others thought the voice said 304 – the apartment where Velasquez was staying.

The woman told rescue crews at the time that she was visiting her parents.

Valeria was with her parents who were visiting from Colombia.

Officials said Valeria could speak some English but had a strong accent, but Velasquez didn’t have an accent.

The report stated: “According to rescuers, the voice was that of a grown woman whose English appeared to be that of an English speaker with native sentence syntax and excellent vocabulary.

“All (of) the rescuers unanimously stated [the voice] did not have an accent.”

Valeria’s uncle revealed the teen’s first language was Spanish “but she can speak English”, according to the report.

He didn’t believe that the voice was that of the teen’s.

Velasquez’s parents Julio, 66, and Angela, 60, also perished in the condo collapse.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, an image of a child’s bunk bed hanging precariously from the condo went viral.

It left people wondering if a kid had been sleeping in a room at the time of the collapsing building.

The bed came from New York City native Linda March’s unit, the Miami Herald reported.

March used this bedroom as a home office which would explain why there was a black desk chair close to the bunk bed of the dismantled apartment, her best friend Rochelle Laufer told the Herald.

Laufer described the place as “beautiful, oceanfront with beautiful views” as she reminisced on the photos March had sent to her.

In 2018, a report found there were several issues with the tower block, but a former building official told the residents the building was “in very good shape.”

On April 9, just 75 days before the condo collapsed, the condo’s board also sent a letter to residents warning that the damage found in 2018 had been “accelerating” over the years.

In the letter, the president of the condo association’s board of directors Jean Wodnicki provided a summary of the major repairs that were needed.

Wodnicki noted that failing to fix the problems in the “near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.”