Celeste Rivas’ ex-boyfriend is breaking his silence.
In a new interview with TMZ, 15-year-old Damien Hernandez—who briefly dated Rivas during middle school—opened up about her troubled home life and the heartbreak of her death.
Damien, who met Celeste at Lakeland Village Middle School in Lake Elsinore when he was in 8th grade and she was in 7th, remembered her as “really kind” and someone who “wanted something serious.” Their relationship started when she showed interest in him, and the two quickly grew close.
According to Damien, Celeste often vented about her rocky relationship with her parents, describing them as “mean” and saying she “didn’t like them.” She would sometimes joke about running away, but no one around her believed she was serious.
“We were at P.E. and she told me [and] my friend that she was running away,” Damien recalled. “She was, like, joking about it … like, it didn’t seem real because she was, like, playing around … The next day she wasn’t at school and that’s the last time I saw her.”
He said he was devastated when he learned her dismembered body had been found in the trunk of D4vd’s Tesla in Los Angeles. Though he’d heard whispers about her connection to the “Romantic Homicide” singer, he admitted, “I didn’t think it was gonna happen, like at all, cause like she was always, like, so happy and stuff.”
“When the news broke, my heart dropped. I just couldn’t believe it … when I saw it was really her I was like, ‘Yeah, I already knew,’” Damien said.
His mother, Jamie, also spoke with TMZ, saying the tragedy struck painfully close to home while urging families to stay alert about the dangers of social media: “If it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone.”
Damien added a haunting reflection: “I just think, like, if someone should’ve just did something … I feel like no one cared.”
The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that detectives are still awaiting the results of Celeste Rivas’ autopsy and that the case remains active.
Earlier reports indicated that Rivas had “very likely” been dead for “several weeks” before her body was discovered inside the 20-year-old singer’s car.
