Report: Aide who died in fire was having an affair with Republican congressman

A British tabloid is reporting that a senior aide to a Texas Republican congressman who died last month after dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself on fire had been engaged in an affair with the congressman.

The report from The Daily Mail doesn’t go into detail on the rumored affair involving Congressman Tony Gonzales and the aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, other than to say the report is based on “multiple sources.”

Santos-Aviles, 35, died on Sept. 14, hours after she was found engulfed in flames outside her home in Uvalde – yes, that Uvalde, the one that you would have heard of because of the awful school shooting in 2022.

According to earlier reporting on her death, Santos-Aviles had recently separated from her husband, and the couple was sharing custody of their 8-year-old son.

Tony Gonzales, 45, who is in his third term in Congress, is married, and he and his wife have six children.

Gonzales is described as a moderate Republican, though he had an endorsement for his first run, in 2020, from Donald Trump, and he voted against the articles of impeachment for Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Santos-Aviles had been working on the staff of Gonzales as the director of the congressman’s Uvalde regional office since 2021, taking the job in November, 10 months into Gonzales’ first term in Congress.

Before joining the congressman’s staff, she had served as the executive director of the Uvalde Area Chamber of Commerce.

The police investigation into her death, according to the earlier reports, indicated that there was no information suggesting that “anyone else was involved” in her death.

“Preliminary findings from DPS personnel confirming that Regina Santos-Aviles was alone in her backyard when the fire began,” said Homer E. Delgado, the police chief in Uvalde, who found himself in a political controversy regarding the investigation after a Uvalde City Council member raised issue with a Facebook post, since deleted, featuring an endorsement for Gonzales from Delgado that was highlighted as the investigation into the death of Santos-Avile was under way.

“My concern is that we shouldn’t be getting involved in political issues,” said Ernest Santos, a member of the Uvalde City Council. “What if, at the end of the election, someone else wins, and then we have to be worried about losing funding? And unfortunately, look at what happened. Here we have a chief of police endorsing this candidate, and we have this happen with an employee of Tony Gonzales. We must remain neutral.”