Austin police confirmed Thursday that 19-year-old Texas A&M student Brianna Aguilera died by suicide over the weekend at a high-rise apartment complex in West Campus amid ongoing speculation about the nature of her death.
Some of Aguilera’s family members have publicly accused the Austin Police Department of a shoddy investigation and continue to strongly dismiss the determination that the 19-year-old took her own life.
But at a news conference Thursday, police said investigators had found a Nov. 25 suicide note in a deleted folder on Aguilera’s phone “addressed to specific people in her life” and learned that she had expressed suicidal thoughts to friends the previous month, as well as via text message on Friday.
“I understand how grief and the need for answers can raise intense emotions and many questions. But sometimes the truth doesn’t provide the answers we’re looking for, and that is this case,” Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said at the press conference, which came a day after the famed trial lawyer Tony Buzbee announced that Aguilera’s family had hired him to conduct an independent investigation into her death.
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Homicide Detective Robert Marshall then laid out a detailed timeline of what happened in the hours leading up to Aguilera’s death, which occurred shortly after midnight on Saturday, and noted that “every witness has been nothing but forthcoming” throughout the process.
“At no time did any evidence point to this being of a criminal nature,” he said.
Marshall said witnesses told police Aguilera had arrived at a football tailgate between 4 and 5 p.m. Friday. She was asked to leave the tailgate around 10 p.m. and entered a wooded area nearby, where she later told friends she believed she had lost her phone. Her belongings were eventually found in that area.
Marshall said Austin police responded at about 12:46 a.m. Saturday, where officers found a woman with “trauma consistent with falling from a higher floor.” She was pronounced dead at 12:56 a.m. and later identified as Aguilera by the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office.
At 12:14 p.m. Saturday — nearly 12 hours after the fall — residents of the apartment contacted police to report Aguilera missing, saying she was expected to stay with them Friday night but had not returned. Marshall said investigators reached out to those same residents just before 1 p.m. Some witnesses told detectives they initially assumed Aguilera had gone back out with another group of friends visiting Austin that weekend.
Later that afternoon, Aguilera’s mother, Stephanie Rodriguez, contacted Austin police several times, including once to report the real-time location data of Aguilera’s missing phone, which appeared to place it in the wooded area near the tailgate.
Rodriguez and other family members have strongly rejected the possibility that Aguilera’s death was an accident or suicide. Relatives say they believe the investigation was deficient and that key steps — such as preserving the scene, collecting physical evidence and thoroughly interviewing those present — were not properly completed.
Marshall said detectives could not release a public determination earlier because it took “hours and hours” to review surveillance footage, perform phone forensics and complete interviews.
In a social media post, Rodriguez wrote that her daughter would never jump from such a height, calling the idea “insane.”
“My daughter loved life and was excited to graduate and pursue her career in law,” Rodriguez wrote, accusing police of not fully investigating.
Aguilera’s cousin, Bell Fernandez, also questioned the findings, writing on Facebook that Aguilera’s phone and keys were given to non-family members, that the apartment from which she fell was not searched and that no one present was formally questioned at a police station.
“My cousin would never do this. She was terribly afraid of heights,” Fernandez wrote. “She was ready to celebrate the holidays, see her mother for Christmas, her two little brothers, and was making plans for her graduation and Aggie ring more than a year in advance.”