WASHINGTON — The aide for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) who died after setting herself on fire was not having an affair with the married congressman, her family said Tuesday.
“I don’t think it has any merit,” Nora Gonzales, the mother of Regina Santos-Aviles, told The Post.
The Daily Mail reported on Monday that Santos-Aviles had separated from her husband and was having an affair with Gonzales before her death at her Uvalde, Texas home on Sept. 13.
Nora Gonzales said she believes the report was “completely false.”
Nora found her daughter badly burned after Aviles doused herself in gasoline before igniting on fire in the backyard of her home, according to cops and surveillance footage.
Aviles begged her for water and was later rushed to a nearby hospital, where she died. Nora told The Post she is unsure why her daughter doused herself in gasoline.
Surveillance footage reportedly indicated that no one else was home at the time.
The Post also reached out to Aviles’ husband, but he declined to comment.
Gonzales has also been silent since allegations of an affair between him and Aviles emerged.
Multiple sources had told the Daily Mail that the mother-of-one and Rep. Gonzales had been linked romantically before her grim death. Gonzales is a married man with six children.
Rep. Gonzales’s spokesman repeatedly refused to deny the affair claims when pressed by the outlet and instead issued a statement accusing “political bottom feeders” of trying to distort the circumstances surrounding her death.
