AUSTIN, Texas – A Laredo mother is searching for answers after her daughter died in Austin hours after last week’s Texas Longhorns-Texas A&M Aggies football game.
Brianna Aguilera, a Texas A&M University student from Laredo, was found dead outside an apartment complex early Saturday morning on the west side of the UT campus.
Aguilera’s mother, Stephanie Rodriguez, told KSAT on Monday that she’s received inconsistent answers from the Austin Police Department.
Investigators have told Rodriguez that they believe Aguilera died by suicide.
Rodriguez said that her daughter was not suicidal, as she was only 19 years old and looking forward to becoming a lawyer after graduation.
In a phone interview with KSAT, Rodriguez said that she called the police after Aguilera did not answer her phone after Friday’s game. Rodriguez said she could see her daughter’s phone pinging in Austin.
Rodriguez said Austin police officers told her she had to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report.
Officers later found Aguilera’s cellphone on Saturday, but it was not until 4 p.m. that Rodriguez was told that her daughter was in the morgue.
Aguilera’s body had been found by a good Samaritan around 1 a.m. on Saturday.
Rodriguez said that a detective told her her daughter had fallen from 17 floors.
“There are a lot of inconsistencies with the story,” Rodriguez said. “He told me they said she jumped, and then he told me that the friends said they didn’t know her whereabouts.”
Rodriguez believes one of the 15 people inside the apartment at the time of her daughter’s death knows something.
“There was a fight that happened between my daughter and another girl, and they were all staying in the same apartment that I have actual text messages of, and the detective just disregarded them,” Rodriguez said.
In a Monday preliminary report, Austin police stated that Aguilera’s death is not currently being investigated as a homicide since the investigation has not revealed any suspicious details.
The Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office will ultimately determine Aguilera’s cause of death.
KSAT reached out to Texas A&M University for a comment on Monday afternoon. A school spokesperson said the university “does not have a statement to share at this time.”
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