Mom Did Nothing as Boyfriend Beat Her Son to Death Because She Was 'Too Eager to Be in a Relationship with a Man'

Mar. 15, 2025

Nickolle Aguilar (left) and Daniel Garcia (right) in August 2021 mugshots.Photo:Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office; Miami Dade County Corrections

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office; Miami Dade County Corrections

Content warning: The following article contains disturbing descriptions of child abuse.

A mother and her ex-boyfriend have been found guilty in connection to the beating death of her 5-year-old son, whose body was found in a remote Colorado ravine in 2021.

On Tuesday, Aug. 6, Nickolle Aguilar, 28, who had accepted a plea deal in exchange for testifying at trial against her former boyfriend, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars, according to the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said she neither sought “to intervene in the physical abuse” or “seek adequate medical care” for her battered son.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Afterward, Aguilar later recalled, per the court documents, that her son had vomited and her boyfriend went to clean him up “and a short time later told Nickolle that Domenic had died,” per the documents.

The couple – who had reserved the room until July 29 and left early without checking out –  then drove in their car to Fraser County, Colo. – about a 15-hour trip of nearly 1,000 miles, per investigators.

They disposed of the boy’s body “in a remote location close to their campsite” near Rocky Mountain State Park, according to the court documents.

And, Aguilar later told investigators, the couple decided together not to report Dominic’s death to authorities.

Then they continued driving, across Mexico’s border to Costa Rica, per the court documents.

Aguilar’s mother ultimately called the FBI, after the worried grandmother tracked Aguilar to Costa Rica and questioned her about Domenic’s whereabouts, according to the investigator’s summary.

Mother and grandmother then returned to the makeshift burial site with law enforcement and recovered the boy’s body for a proper burial, per the court documents.

On Aug. 25, 2021, law enforcement pulled the boy – still in the clothes he had been wearing when he was carried from the motel stairs – out of a deep ravine, noting in the narrative summary that he “had been exposed to the elements and animal activity for almost a full month.”

Domenic had suffered ongoing “extensive physical abuse” at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend, per the court documents, which note that the mother later admitted to witnessing multiple attacks in the three weeks leading up to his death. Once, she said she had watched her injured son vomiting “a black and brown liquid substance.”

But she did not intervene or leave her boyfriend, because, she later told investigators, “she was too eager to be in a relationship with a man.”

Aguilar told investigators that the couple had also discussed the possibility of losing custody of their other children.

Later that August, the couple – who broke up sometime after the boy’s death – were separately arrested in Florida.

source: people.com