By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Two women found dead in a north Del Rio apartment late Sunday night have been identified.
Justice of the Peace Pct. 2 Antonio “Tony” Faz III identified the two women as Amy Nicole Barrera, 42, and Raquel Cerda Castillo, 52, and told the 830 Times Thursday he has ordered autopsies to determine the exact cause of their deaths.
Faz said he was called at 11:50 p.m. Sunday and asked to join Del Rio Police Department officers at the scene of the deaths, an apartment building on Ela Street.
“They called and said they had possibly multiple persons non-responsive,” Faz said.
Faz said he was unable to get close to the apartment in which the women had been found.
“When I arrived, I observed a fire apparatus, a fire truck, from Laughlin Air Force Base, and I believe that was their HazMat unit, and I spoke to (two DRPD officers), and they told me they had a situation where the HazMat people were inside due to the presence of fentanyl,” Faz said.
Faz said he never went into the apartment.
“I must have been maybe half a block from the entrance to the apartment, and I stood there for a while and I asked them, and they told me because of the fentanyl presence, it was very dangerous and they didn’t want me to get close to there,” he said.
Faz said he asked the officers if he could examine the scene via Facetime, which Faz said he has often used in the past two years because of COVID.
“They said their instructions were that they didn’t want to take their phones in there because they could be contaminated,” Faz said.
He said the persons who entered the apartment were all wearing HazMat suits.
“It was a dangerous situation, and during the course of the time I was there, I learned there were two females inside the apartment. The third person who was inside the apartment was upstairs (in the apartment), and he was taken to the hospital before I arrived,” Faz said.
Faz said he was able to move to a vantage point closer to the apartment where he could observe the scene at some distance and set the formal time of the two women’s deaths at 12:48 a.m. Monday.
“On cases like this, it is imperative that we send the bodies for an autopsy,” Faz said.
Faz said once he gets the reports back from the autopsies, he will make a formal determination of the cause of death.
He noted that autopsy reports could take six months to a year to be completed.
Until then, the cause of death is listed as “pending investigation.”
“Until we get the actual cause of death, then we will amend the reports and put the actual cause of death,” Faz said.
“My job is to perform the inquest and try to determine what happened, and this case, I know it was drug-related, but I don’t know exactly what the cause of death was. All I do is the assessment and make a determination, do I send them for an autopsy or not, but the actual investigation, that will be done, in this case, the police department. They’re the ones who have to piece that puzzle together,” the judge added.
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