A 35-year-old regional director for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) died on September 14, 2025, one day after she poured gasoline on herself and ignited it in the backyard of her Uvalde, Texas home. Her death has since been ruled a suicide.
Regina Santos-Aviles worked as a regional director in Gonzales’ congressional office. First responders arrived at her home on September 13, 2025, and found her on the front porch suffering from severe burn injuries.
According to Uvalde police records released Monday and obtained by the New York Post, Santos-Aviles told officers on the scene that she had discovered her estranged husband was cheating on her with her best friend.
One officer’s report stated that Santos-Aviles told responders 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.”
A second officer’s report included a separate claim from Santos-Aviles that her husband “is gay and is having an affair with her best friend.”
Her estranged husband, Adrian Aviles, denied both allegations. “Those allegations are completely false,” he told the Post, stating the female friend in question “is also my childhood friend, and there was no sexual relation between the two of us.”
A former colleague of Santos-Aviles also rejected the claims.
On the night Santos-Aviles set herself on fire, Adrian Aviles was watching UFC fights at Hotel Valencia with a female companion whose identity he declined to provide to investigators, according to the police files. A friend texted Aviles that evening to inform him that Santos-Aviles had sent a video of herself pouring gasoline on her body.
Uvalde detective Gregory Villa noted in his report that Aviles provided screenshots of text messages between Santos-Aviles and a friend identified as Alfred Garza Jr.
In those messages, Santos-Aviles wrote: “Tell baller I’m setting myself on fire right now, so have fun raising our son.” The message was followed by a five-second video showing Santos-Aviles pouring gasoline on herself, according to Villa’s report.
Police recovered medications from the scene. Aviles told investigators that Santos-Aviles “had been taking antidepressants and consuming alcohol regularly, sometimes mixing the two.” He had previously told the Post she was “a completely stable… mentally-sane person before all of this,” though a friend separately told officers she had “possibly been to a mental health hospital in her teenage years.”
Detective Villa’s report also included Aviles’ account of a prior self-harm incident, in which Santos-Aviles “contacted him while pointing a firearm at her own head,” with their son audible in the background. Police had been dispatched during that prior incident as well.
Adrian and Regina shared an eight-year-old son. The Post previously reported that the two had separated in August 2024, months after Aviles discovered sexually explicit text messages between his wife and Congressman Gonzales in May 2024.
A former colleague who worked alongside Santos-Aviles in Gonzales’ office told the Post: “You have to understand that the affair she had with Gonzales led to sharp mental decline. It led to drinking, medication use, and insecurities.”
The colleague added: “I knew Regina before and after this affair. Before she was normal, calm, and happy. After she was the opposite of all those things.”
