Mom of Texas A&M Student Who Died After Football Game Says ‘I Don’t Believe This Was an Accident’

Brianna Marie Aguilera’s mother says she does not believe the explanations she’s been given about how her daughter died.

The 19-year-old Texas A&M student was found dead outside a West Campus apartment building in Austin, Texas, early on Saturday, Nov. 29, after the game between the Aggies and the University of Texas ended.

In an updated statement released on Tuesday, Dec. 2, the Austin Police Department said it is investigating the college sophomore’s death but that, based on what they know so far, “the facts obtained do not indicate that this is a homicide.”

According to the department, detectives are continuing to interview witnesses, collect evidence and review what happened the night Aguilera died. They emphasized that the case is being handled as a death investigation and said there is currently no indication of “suspicious or criminal circumstances” surrounding her passing. The Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office will determine her official cause of death.

The department added that every death in the community is taken seriously and that investigators remain committed to fully examining the circumstances around Aguilera’s death, offering condolences to her family, friends and all who are mourning her.

Brianna’s mother, Stephanie Rodriguez, strongly disagrees with the suggestion that her daughter’s death was accidental or self-inflicted.

“I’m thinking either someone shoved her over the balcony, or when my daughter does drink, she has the tendency to fall asleep, and she’s so thin and frail, she cannot handle alcohol,” Rodriguez says. “I think that maybe either it might’ve been that, and they probably got scared and threw her over the balcony, or they shoved her off.”

Rodriguez says Austin Police told her that they believe Brianna’s death may have been “suicidal or accidental.”

“That made me very upset,” Rodriguez explains. “My daughter wasn’t suicidal. I would know. She was living her best life. She loved life. She loved going to school. She wanted to become a lawyer. It was just something where I thought, you don’t say that.”

According to her mother, Aguilera had been at a party on the 17th floor of 21 Rio, a 21-story apartment building, with around 14 other people.

Rodriguez says that, despite not being able to reach Brianna for hours after the game began shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 28, she believes some kind of dispute may have taken place between her daughter and others at the gathering. She alleges that Brianna argued with another girl about the girl’s boyfriend, saying, “They were arguing about that.”

As she waits for more information from investigators, Rodriguez wants people to remember Brianna as more than the circumstances of her death. She describes her daughter as a bright, driven student who dreamed of becoming a criminal defense attorney. A former high school cheerleader, Brianna was also a devoted big sister who doted on her two younger brothers.

During a recent trip home to Laredo for Thanksgiving break, Brianna woke up early one morning to surprise her brothers with Starbucks and later took them to see Wicked at the movie theater.

“She was always smart,” Rodriguez says. “She was eager to get back to school. She was happy. She wanted to get back to A&M. There was no way that she would do this to herself.”