Chelsea Lynn Sizemore was born into a family with deep connections to the Tampa, Florida community. Her father, Dave “Flash” Morgan, was a familiar voice to local radio listeners through his work at WRBQ-FM, better known as Q105. Morgan was particularly recognized for hosting the station’s Saturday Night Dance Party, making him a well-known personality in the Tampa Bay area.
Chelsea, however, was building a life of her own. At twenty-one, she was the mother of a young daughter named Mackenzie Sophia. She lived with her boyfriend, Eric Salabirria, who was seven years older than she was.
Although relatively little biographical information about Eric appeared in news coverage of the murders, he was identified as Chelsea’s boyfriend and the other victim of the attack. Contemporary reporting indicated that neither Chelsea nor Eric had a criminal record in Florida.
Friends and acquaintances remembered the couple through online tributes following their deaths. Some recalled Chelsea’s cheerful personality, her ability to make others laugh, and the affection she showed those around her. One acquaintance remembered spending time joking and laughing with both Chelsea and Eric, while others expressed disbelief that two people so young could have their lives ended so suddenly.
The events of the evening of February 5th, 2014 began unfolding sometime after nine p.m. Eric had apparently sent a text message to a neighbor asking that person to come over to the house. The neighbor later arrived and discovered the couple dead.
The existence of that message raised an unsettling possibility: Eric might have realized that something was wrong before he was killed.
At approximately eleven thirty p.m., Tampa police responded to a 911 call reporting a possible emergency at the residence. Officers entered the home and discovered the bodies of Chelsea Sizemore and Eric Salabirria. Both had suffered what police described as upper-body trauma.
The discovery was horrifying, but there was one extraordinary piece of good news amid the tragedy: the couple’s two-year-old daughter had survived. Mackenzie had been inside the home, yet she was physically unharmed. A neighbor took the little girl from the residence, and she was subsequently placed in the care of a family member. Authorities did not publicly explain why the child had been spared or establish whether she had witnessed any part of the attack.
As detectives began examining the house, they noticed something significant: there were no apparent signs of forced entry, suggesting that the victims voluntarily admitted someone, that an entry point had been left unsecured, or that the killer had another means of entering.
On February 6th, the day after the murders, contemporary reporting indicated that Tampa detectives did not believe the killings were random. Investigators suspected that whoever killed Chelsea and Eric might have known them. That assessment implied the possibility of a targeted attack, although the police did not publicly identify a motive.
Detectives also faced the question of Eric’s apparent text message to the neighbor. Had he been expecting a visitor? Had someone arrived unexpectedly? Had there been an argument or confrontation before the killings? Or had Eric become concerned about something unrelated to the eventual attack?
Investigators released relatively little information about the crime scene. Their official descriptions characterized the fatal injuries as upper-body trauma. Some secondary sources subsequently categorized the deaths as shootings, but the publicly accessible Tampa Police Department cold-case summary does not provide a detailed account of the weapons used or the victims’ precise injuries.
No verified public account establishes the sequence in which Chelsea and Eric were attacked, whether either attempted to resist, or how many perpetrators were involved.
On May 1st, 2014, Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay published an appeal for information about the killings, offering a reward of up to $3,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person or persons responsible.
As the years passed, the murders gradually disappeared from daily news coverage. And as of October 2026, the double homicide of Chelsea Sizemore and Eric Salabirria is still unsolved.
