This story is part of The Dallas Morning News’ homicide project focused on sharing the stories of all people killed in Dallas in 2024.
Isaac Aguirre celebrated his 16th birthday with grilled fajitas and a slice of tres leches cake with peaches — his favorite dessert. His mother, Ana Aguirre, placed 16 candles atop the store-bought cake.
Less than two weeks later, Isaac was dead, gunned down near his family’s home in Pleasant Grove after a minor car accident led to a fight. His family, who witnessed the shooting, is left trying to make sense of what happened.
“He was my baby boy,” Ana Aguirre, 44, said. “I know you shouldn’t question God’s choice, but why him?”
Isaac, a sophomore at W.W. Samuel High School in Dallas, loved soccer, PlayStation, cooking, hanging out with his friends and girlfriend. He was applying for summer jobs and looking forward to a break from school when he was killed.
The third of four siblings, Isaac was the family mama’s boy, his mother said. He loved helping her cook chicken alfredo and enchiladas, and he wanted to eventually become a chef.
At 6 feet tall, he towered over his 5-foot mother, and would often walk up behind her and wrap her in a bear hug, she said. If he made her angry, he reappeared an hour later, offering to take out the trash or wash dishes to earn her forgiveness. When she gathered dirty clothes for the laundromat, he volunteered to tag along and carry the baskets.
“He hated for me to go anywhere alone,” she said. “He always took care of me.”
When he died, his mother said, Isaac was again trying to take care of her.
Ana Aguirre was driving home the evening of May 2 when she said she accidentally pulled in front of another car, causing a fender bender, at an intersection in Pleasant Grove, just a couple blocks from her home.
A woman asked for her insurance, she said, and Ana Aguirre replied that she did not have a hard copy. When Ana Aguirre asked to talk to the driver of the car, the woman’s child, the two began arguing.
Ana Aguirre said she called one of her son’s for help, and her children walked over. Isaac raced to her, asking, “Mama, are you alright?” They were the last words she would hear him say.
The other woman also called for help, and as the fight escalated, Ana Aguirre called 911. Without warning, she said, someone pulled out a gun and began firing. Isaac was shot in the head. Two bystanders were wounded and survived, police said.
Isaac’s father, Benito, cradled his body on the street and tried to stop the bleeding with his T-shirt. Ana Aguirre watched, wailing. Isaac died several hours later at the hospital, but Ana Aguirre said she knows he was already gone.
“Every time I close my eyes, I replay this over and over and over, just wishing it could be different,” she said. “Why did I have to call my children for help?”
A Dallas police spokesman said in an email Wednesday that detectives are working on the case but no arrests have been made.
After the shooting, Ana Aguirre stayed with family for days, too devastated to drive by the spot she watched her son die. She finally returned home last week, still in a haze.
For now, Ana Aguirre closes her eyes and tries to think of something other than Isaac’s last moments. She pictures her son, barely 16 and happy, wrapping her in a bear hug.
Isaac’s family started a GoFundMe to help cover funeral costs.
