AUSTIN, Texas – Houston attorney Tony Buzbee called the Austin Police Department “keystone cops” and urged them to have a different investigator look into the death of Brianna Aguilera, a Texas A&M student who fell to her death from an apartment after attending a tailgate for the A&M-Texas rivalry football game.
“None of the things that we’ve been told by the Austin Police Department are consistent with the actual facts that we’ve learned,” Buzbee said during a press conference at his downtown office on Friday afternoon alongside Brianna’s family.
Buzbee accused the Austin investigator handling the case of being “irresponsible” after concluding Brianna’s death was a suicide.
“I cannot deal with you jumping to conclusions and not performing an actual investigation,” Brianna’s mother Stephanie Rodriguez said during the press conference. “Do your job.”
Rodriguez claimed police acted annoyed and “arrogant” when she spoke with them this week, though investigators said they tried to reach her four times to no avail until she told them to communicate with her attorney.
“You can’t close a case before you even have the cause of death from the medical examiner. Period, full stop. You don’t have that right, you don’t have that authority. We have to get this right. This is not just for this family. This is for any family,” Buzbee said.
In a statement responding to Buzbee’s press conference on Friday night, the Austin Police Department said it stands by the information provided in a Thursday press conference, adding that APD has never made a cause or manner of death determination in the case and the investigation remains open.
“We understand emotions are extremely high and that Brianna’s passing has brought immense pain to her loved ones. We share in that sorrow. This is still an active and ongoing investigation. The misinformation that has been shared harms innocent people and jeopardizes the integrity of the investigative process. From the beginning, our priority has been and continues to be, to conduct a thorough, complete, and respectful investigation,” an APD spokesperson told KPRC 2 News.
Addressing the deleted digital suicide note that Det. Robert Marshall said he found on Brianna’s phone, Buzbee called it “total malarkey” and said the “note” was actually a creative writing essay she had written for a class.
Buzbee claimed the investigator was mentioning suicide before even seeing her phone.
“At that point, he hadn’t talked to one witness. He hadn’t seen her phone. He hadn’t done anything. That’s sloppy and irresponsible. He claims she made suicidal comments. He told us in the Zoom call, ‘she made suicidal comments.’ You know what he was talking about? The other day, when I was talking to a friend the other day, I said, ‘Man, you’re going to make me jump off a bridge.’ That’s what he’s talking about. Silliness like that. He later claimed she was making those kinds of statements on the day of the night that she died. If that’s the case, why do her friends leave her out on the balcony by herself,” Buzbee said. “None of the things that we’ve been told by the Austin Police Department are consistent with the actual facts that we’ve learned. The detective was talking about suicide before he was ever given her phone. Then he gets into her phone and he sees an essay that she wrote, and he calls it a suicide note.”
During APD’s press conference on Thursday, the lead detective said Brianna had a drunken argument with her out-of-town boyfriend over the phone using a friend’s phone.
The call ended around 12:44 a.m., two minutes before police got called about a body on the street below the high-rise building.
Buzbee said police told him after the call, within that two-minute window, Brianna returned the phone to her friend before being last seen on the balcony, which he called “absolutely impossible” and “very suspicious.”
He raised concerns that police didn’t interview a witness who claimed to hear screaming and fighting coming from the 17th floor area around the time Brianna died, and that detectives didn’t interview another girl who fought with Brianna at a tailgate before she went back to the high rise.
“Am I suggesting that they that there’s some kind of conspiracy? No, I’m suggesting they’re lazy,” he said. “I’m not accusing anybody, other than the APD, the Austin Police Department, of not doing its job."
Buzbee says if Austin PD fails to assign a new investigator to the case, he will be calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to get the Texas Rangers involved in the investigation.
The Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office is still working to determine Brianna’s cause and manner of death, police said, and toxicology reports are pending. APD said the investigation is ongoing.