Uvalde, Texas, police records released Monday detail the final hours of Regina Santos-Aviles, the 35-year-old regional director for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) who lit herself on fire on Sept. 13, 2025, and died the following day. Her death was later ruled a suicide.
First responders found Santos-Aviles with severe burn injuries on the front porch of her home. According to one officer's report, she told them she discovered her husband was cheating on her with her best friend, and as a result, she poured gasoline on herself and set herself on fire. Another officer wrote that Santos-Aviles stated her husband "is gay and is having an affair with her best friend."
Her estranged husband, Adrian Aviles, rejected the claims.
Those allegations are completely false.
He told officers the "best friend," a female, was also his childhood friend, and that there was no sexual relationship between the two of them. Police files noted that Aviles was watching UFC fights at Hotel Valencia, accompanied by a female friend whose identity he declined to provide, at the time of his wife's self-immolation.
The police records paint a picture of a woman in severe distress long before that September night. Uvalde detective Gregory Villa wrote that when asked about Regina's history, Aviles said she had previously made self-harm threats. He described a prior incident where she contacted him while pointing a firearm at her own head.
Their son could be heard screaming for his mother during that incident, and police were dispatched. Aviles was unable to provide an exact date for it.
Aviles also told officers that his late wife had been taking antidepressants and consuming alcohol regularly, the New York Post reported, sometimes mixing the two. He had previously told The Post that she "was a completely stable … mentally sane person before all of this."
Both of those statements cannot be fully true at the same time. Either she was completely stable, or she had a documented history of mixing antidepressants with alcohol and threatening self-harm at gunpoint. The police report suggests the latter.
Detective Villa's report includes a chilling sequence. Aviles provided screenshots of text messages between Regina and his friend, identified as Alfred Garza Jr. In those messages, Regina expressed that she believed Aviles was with Alfred and stated:
Tell baller I'm setting myself on fire right now, so have fun raising our son.
That message was followed by a five-second video showing Regina pouring gasoline on herself. The couple shared an 8-year-old son. They had separated in August 2024, months after the husband discovered sexual text messages between his wife and Gonzales in May 2024.
The police report is only one thread in a story that has consumed Gonzales' reelection campaign ahead of the March 3 primary, where he faces YouTuber Brandon Herrera and other GOP candidates.
The Texas Republican, in a May 2024 exchange, asked for racy photos and inquired about his aide's preferred sexual positions. The disclosure of those text messages last week prompted a handful of GOP colleagues on Monday to call for him to step down. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) did not mince words:
These text messages are disgusting and inexcusable. A Member of Congress. Harassing his own staffer in the middle of the night.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) also demanded Gonzales' resignation. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said the congressman should drop his reelection bid.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters the allegations are "clearly very serious," while cautioning that both House and state-level investigations need to play out first.
Gonzales has accused the widower Aviles and his attorney, Bobby Barrera, of seeking to "blackmail" him with the disclosure of the text messages. The attorney and husband were additionally seeking an up to $300,000 settlement under the Congressional Accountability Act.
There is no clean narrative here. There is no side of this story that offers comfort.
A 35-year-old mother sent a video of herself dousing her body with gasoline to a friend, then called for help as flames consumed her. She died the next day. An 8-year-old boy lost his mother. A family was already fractured before the fire, and a congressional office sits at the center of the fracture.
The police report complicates the framing that some have tried to build. Santos-Aviles did not mention Gonzales to the officers who found her burning. She blamed her husband. That does not exonerate anyone. It does not resolve the question of what the text messages mean or whether House ethics rules were violated. But it does mean that the clean political narratives being built on both sides of this story rest on incomplete foundations.
What the police records do confirm is that this woman was in crisis for months. She had threatened self-harm before. She was mixing medication and alcohol. She told friends she wanted her family back. And the people around her, from her estranged husband to her employer, now point fingers at each other while an 8-year-old boy grows up without a mother.
The timing of these disclosures, days before a contested primary, is not accidental. Gonzales himself acknowledged as much when he labeled the effort a "blackmail" campaign. Whether the motive is justice, money, or political advantage, the result is the same: voters in Texas' 23rd Congressional District will cast ballots on March 3 knowing their incumbent is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Conduct and facing resignation demands from members of his own party.
This is what happens when personal conduct collides with public responsibility. The conservative position has always been clear: elected officials are held to a higher standard because they chose public life. That standard does not bend for party affiliation.
The facts will continue to emerge. The investigations will proceed. But Regina Santos-Aviles is gone. Her son will carry what happened in that backyard in Uvalde for the rest of his life. Whatever accountability looks like here, it arrives too late for the person who needed it most.
