A Texas man admitted to killing his elderly aunt after she attempted to kick him out of her house, according to police.
Adrian Joe Padilla, 24, has been charged with capital murder and tampering/fabricating evidence with intent to impair a human corpse, said Aubrey Police Department on Tuesday.
The alarm was raised after Mary Inez Jacinto, 71, did not respond to calls and texts from concerned family members, triggering her sister to request a welfare check, said police.
When officers arrived at the property north of Dallas on Monday evening they found the suspect in the back garden of the home. They then made the gruesome discovery of his elderly aunt who had been “wrapped in blankets” beneath “a pile of dirt.”
The victim had “stab wounds to her stomach and her feet” when her body was found, police told Fox4News. Jacinto had only been retired for a few years after working as a Dallas ISD employee, according to the outlet.
The aunt and nephew allegedly had an altercation over his eviction the night before the body was discovered, reported the Denton Record-Chronicle.
The newspaper reported that Padilla claimed to police that during the argument, his aunt threatened him with a kitchen knife before he allegedly struck her with a punch that knocked her to the ground.
While the 71-year-out was knocked out unconscious, the nephew then moved her body to a bedroom and allegedly stabbed her twice in the stomach, said Fox4News.
Padilla told police that he took a nap while she remained in the bedroom with her wounds, per an affidavit seen by the Record-Chronicle.
During that nap, his aunt reportedly made it to her car in the garage and tried to flee the home but he found her and allegedly struck her again multiple times causing her to “fall asleep.”
“She tried to stab me so I stabbed her back”, the suspect reportedly told officers after his arrest.
As of Tuesday, Padilla was being held in the Denton County Jail with a bail set at $20m.
Aubrey Police Chief Richard Brooks told Fox4News: “A family member had reported to us that they had not been able to get ahold of the victim for several hours. They are a tight-knit family.”
George Rangel, a former colleague told Fox4News: “The impact this lady had not only on her family but to her work and her co-workers, there are no words.
“This is a terrible loss. Terrible loss. She was one of a kind."
