Nearly two months after finding the body of Mariadelis Labrador Siles, 28, in the far northwest side of San Antonio, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office ruled her death a suicide.
Labrador Siles, a Cuban immigrant, was found March 12 in a wooded area near Helotes Creek with stab wounds to the chest. She had been reported missing March 10 by her boyfriend.
On Tuesday, BCSO announced that Labrador Siles’ wounds were self-inflicted.
“After a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mariadelis Labrador, and in consultation with the findings of the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, her death has been determined and officially ruled a suicide,” BCSO spokesman Johnny Garcia said in a statement.
In March, the medical examiner’s office said Labrador Siles’ cause of death was a stab wound to the chest, but was unsure whether it was foul play or self-inflicted.
“What we have is that the person died here on scene,” Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said in March.
“It is possible that the woman who disappeared was going through a mental crisis. … If we can figure out what happened to this woman, we could find out about any problems that escalated to the point of her self-harming, or someone hurting her,” Salazar told some reporters in Spanish at the scene.
Detectives found Labrador Siles’ body and a weapon under an overpass at the intersection of Braun Road and Mustang Ranch, a wooded area under a bridge with what has become a natural walking path through the brush.
Labrador Siles had lived in the United States since Jan. 9, 2024. She migrated from Pinar Del Rio, Cuba, the most western province of the island through the humanitarian parole program launched in 2022, which allowed anyone legally in the U.S. to sponsor people from Cuba and Venezuela financially.
With the sponsorship of her boyfriend, she applied for her residency through the Cuban Adjustment Act, which provides a path to permanent residency after a year of living in the U.S. She was waiting for her residency card to visit her family back in Cuba.
In the meantime, she worked cleaning houses and sold detergent, her brother said.
Labrador Siles’ body was flown to her home country after a family friend raised more than $13,000 through a GoFundMe to pay for funeral and transportation expenses.
In Spanish, Labrador Siles’ gravestone in Cuba reads, “Loving you was easy, forgetting you is impossible, you will always be in the hearts of your parents, brother, family and friends.”
