Larry Brister was less than a mile from home when a brief February 2023 trip led to injuries he did not survive.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Larry Brister’s trip on Feb. 11, 2023, was supposed to be short. The 80-year-old left his North Side home to pick up dinner nearby. Instead, he was found critically injured in a roadway, his truck was gone and a criminal case began that would outlast him by more than three years before the last defendant was sentenced.
That transformation — from an ordinary evening errand to a fatal carjacking and years of court proceedings — defines the case now that all three defendants have received prison terms. Zachariah Aguirre, 19, was sentenced to 25 years in the murder case. Gabriel Urbano, 19, received 20 years on aggravated robbery convictions, while Miguel Acosta, 20, received 10 years after pleading guilty to aggravated robbery. The men were teenagers when police linked them to the attack.
Brister had gone only a short distance from home before the encounter. Police said officers responded at about 7 p.m. to Walker Ranch and Stonewood Drive, close to the Bluffview Estates area where Brister lived. They found him on the roadway with extensive injuries. His condition was so serious that investigators could not immediately rely on him to explain the sequence of events. What they did know was that his pickup truck had been stolen and that he needed emergency hospital treatment.
The first public account focused on the assault and missing vehicle. Weeks later, police announced arrests of three boys between 15 and 16 years old. All were charged with aggravated robbery. Their names remained confidential because of their ages. Investigators said they had identified the suspects and obtained warrants, with the last of the three taken into custody in March. At that stage, the case was serious but still legally centered on a robbery in which the victim had survived.
Later accounts from prosecutors supplied a more detailed sequence. Aguirre, then 15, approached Brister and caused him to believe he should get out of the truck to inspect a tire, authorities said. After Brister stepped outside, Aguirre entered the vehicle and drove away. Prosecutors said Brister tried to prevent the theft and was dragged. The truck was the apparent objective of the crime, but the physical consequences to Brister quickly eclipsed the loss of the vehicle itself.
Brister’s injuries forced his family into a very different routine from the one they had expected that night. Instead of waiting for him to return with food, relatives began a prolonged hospital vigil. They said he suffered multiple fractures, damage to his lungs and brain injuries, among other trauma. His widow, Sandra Brister, later said he fought for months. Some injuries began to heal, but complications continued, and the family eventually faced the decision to move him into hospice care.
He died in July 2023. San Antonio police then referred the matter to homicide investigators, and the defendants’ legal exposure changed. Charges that had started with aggravated robbery were followed by murder allegations associated with Brister’s death. The shift was more than a procedural development. It meant the central question was no longer only who had participated in stealing Brister’s truck and injuring him, but how criminal responsibility would be assigned for a death that occurred months after the initial attack.
Brister’s death also broadened public understanding of the man behind the police report. His family described someone unusually active for his age. He still played tennis, helped neighbors with yard work and liked to dance. His widow said music was important to him, particularly Mexican music. He and Sandra Brister had two adult daughters and three grandchildren. The portrait stood in contrast to the final months of his life, which were dominated by hospitalization and recovery efforts following the carjacking.
The criminal cases did not move quickly. By November 2025, all three defendants were still awaiting final resolution, and Brister’s family was publicly frustrated. They said scheduled proceedings had been postponed and that they wanted clearer communication about when the cases would be tried or otherwise resolved. Their concerns added a second form of waiting to a story that had already involved months of waiting at Brister’s bedside. This time, the family was waiting for the courts.
The first major resolution arrived in July 2026 with Aguirre’s sentencing. He accepted a plea agreement in the murder case and received 25 years in prison. During the hearing, Sandra Brister told the court that her husband had simply gone out to get hamburgers. After he failed to return, she went toward the entrance of the neighborhood and encountered people assisting him. Her account underscored the abruptness with which a familiar routine had turned into a family emergency.
One detail from that night remained with the family through the later court proceedings. Sandra Brister said former San Antonio Spurs player Bruce Bowen was among those who stopped and helped after her husband was found. The intervention could not prevent the injuries from eventually proving fatal, but it became part of the family’s account of the strangers who responded to a man lying badly hurt near the roadway. At Aguirre’s sentencing, that memory shared space with the far more painful fact that Brister never recovered enough to return home.
Urbano’s case was resolved on aggravated robbery charges rather than a murder conviction. He pleaded no contest to two robbery counts, and state District Judge Christine Del Prado sentenced him to 20 years on each, to run at the same time. Prosecutors dismissed a murder count and another aggravated robbery charge under the agreement. Court records also connected one of Urbano’s convictions to a separate confrontation involving another victim, making his final sentence the product of more than one criminal episode.
Acosta was the final defendant to be sentenced. He pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and received a 10-year prison term. His punishment gave the case its last outstanding court result and created a final set of three different outcomes: a 25-year murder sentence for Aguirre, a 20-year aggravated robbery sentence for Urbano and a 10-year aggravated robbery sentence for Acosta. The differences reflect the separate charges and plea resolutions rather than a single collective judgment against the three.
The final sentencing also brings the story back to its starting point. At first, police knew an elderly man had been found injured and his truck was missing. Then came the arrests, Brister’s long hospitalization, his death, homicide proceedings, postponed court dates and ultimately three negotiated resolutions. Each stage added legal complexity, but none changed how the case began: an 80-year-old man drove away from home for an everyday task and was attacked before he could return.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said after the sentencings that accountability cannot reverse the loss experienced by Brister’s family. That distinction is especially clear in a case where the victim survived long enough for relatives to hope for recovery but died before any defendant was sentenced. The prison terms answer the criminal cases, but they cannot return Brister to the active life his relatives described or erase the months his family spent watching his condition deteriorate.
More than three years after the dinner trip, the court process has now caught up with the consequences of that night. All three defendants are under prison sentences, and no initial sentencing remains pending in the Brister case. The final judgment closes the prosecution’s long arc from stolen truck to homicide case, while the event at its center remains strikingly simple: Brister left home to get dinner and never came back to the life he knew.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.