{"id":132153,"date":"2026-01-21T17:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/132153\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T17:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:38:07","slug":"dallas-police-investigate-death-of-15-year-old-found-in-south-dallas-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/132153\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas police investigate death of 15-year-old found in South Dallas pond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Update: <\/p>\n<p>Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026 11:15 a.m.: This story has been updated with information on the death investigation by Dallas police.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">The body of a 15-year-old boy pulled from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/south-dallas\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/south-dallas\/\">South Dallas<\/a> pond in December was later identified due to a missing persons report, police said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">The body was identified as 15-year-old Ariel Alejandro Iraheta Hernandez by the Dallas County medical examiner\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">The boy\u2019s unidentified body was recovered from a pond near the 400 block of Mission Hills Lane on Dec. 25, Dallas police said in a news release Wednesday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">The day after the body was found, police said a missing persons report was filed at its southeast division station.<\/p>\n<p>Crime in The News<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__3beff secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-20 text-center text-gray-dark\">Read the crime and public safety news your neighbors are talking about.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__8MgJa flex flex-wrap text-gray-dark secondaryRoman secondaryRoman-10 text-center justify-center\">By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0<a class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__lU9-l border-b border-gray-dark hover_border-0 focus_border-0 active_border-0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/help\/terms-of-service\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a class=\"dmnc_features-cta-social-article-cta-social-module__lU9-l border-b border-gray-dark hover_border-0 focus_border-0 active_border-0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Police said the  boy was later identified as the missing person reported.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Dallas police said its homicide division is investigating the incident as an unexplained death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-text-paragraph\">Anyone with information on this investigation is asked to contact Detective J. Romero, #10009, at 214-671-4226 or at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/crime\/2026\/01\/21\/dallas-police-investigate-death-of-15-year-old-found-in-south-dallas-pond-as-homicide\/mailto:joshua.romero@dallaspolice.gov\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">joshua.romero@dallaspolice.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Update: Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026 11:15 a.m.: This story has been updated with information on the death investigation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[294,102,104,103,401,2461,1884],"class_list":{"0":"post-132153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news","12":"tag-dallas-police","13":"tag-homicide","14":"tag-south-dallas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}