Politics

“Please send help. It hurts so bad,” Regina Santos-Aviles told a police dispatcher the night she set herself on fire. Standing in her backyard on September 13, 2025, Santos-Aviles had doused herself in gasoline then used a lighter to ignite the flames, according to a fire department report. The 35-year-old mom was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, where she was pronounced dead.

For the four years leading up to her death, Santos-Aviles had worked as the regional director of Congressman Tony Gonzales’ district office in Uvalde, Texas. In the spring of 2024, text messages recently released by her family show, the Republican repeatedly pressured his aide for “sexy” photos and quizzed her about her favorite sexual positions, even as Santos-Aviles resisted his advances and told him he was going “too far.”

The fallout from the subsequent affair was swift and total for Santos-Aviles. Her husband found out and broadcast his knowledge of it in a text sent to Gonzales and seven of her coworkers. She was ostracized at work, as her husband ended their 21-year relationship and moved out of their home. Santos-Aviles’ mental health deteriorated, people close to her said, even as she remained in her job until her death a year and a half later.

In November, the Office of Congressional Conduct opened an inquiry into Gonzales’ conduct — an inquiry the Texas congressman has reportedly refused to cooperate with. Per House protocol, the findings of that investigation will remain secret, even if they are deemed serious enough to refer to the House Ethics Committee.