Texas teen shot, set on fire in Travis County 25 years ago

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas - Twenty-five years ago, a teenager was shot and set on fire in Travis County. His mother continues to seek justice.

On April 13, 1999, 18-year-old Mario Chavez's mother, Cristina Jesurun, left for work. 

"I knocked on his bedroom door, and I said, 'Mario, I'm leaving. Take care, and I love you'. He opened up his mouth and said, 'I love you, too, mom.' That was the last time I heard from him," Jesurun said.

That night, she made dinner and waited for Mario to come home, but he didn't. Instead, there was a knock on the door from the Travis County Sheriff's Office. 

"Why are they here?" she recalls thinking.

They asked if she owned a Lincoln. It was the car her son drove.

Mario was shot and set on fire, along with the car, on the 8700 block of Nuckols Crossing in Southeast Austin.

"That was a very hard thing to swallow. You know, what do you do?" Jesurun said.

Mario was last seen with three other men, but murder charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

Mario was a senior at Garza High School. His mother describes him as a social butterfly. He never got to graduate.

"He wanted to go to college and become a dentist, then buy a house and then get married, and then have lots of kids," she said. "He had goals, and now they're gone. He was 18, and he'll forever be 18."

Mario Chavez

After years of no closure, around 2004, Jesurun asked the Travis County Commissioners Court to create a cold case unit and was successful. 

"How would you feel if that was your son or daughter, would you just stand around and move to one side and just do nothing? " she said.

Last September, TCSO unveiled a website of cold cases sorted by decade. Mario's is one of dozens on there.

"One of my goals was to develop a page for our cold cases so that our victims can have a face and a voice and so that the community knows that we are working on these cases," Det. Javier Hernandez said at the time.

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Jesurun says each year that passes is difficult, especially on her son's birthday, Jan. 2, and the holidays.

"It's been really hard, especially around Christmas when I imagine seeing my son decorating the tree," she said.

There's a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.

"I'm hoping that somebody will say something not just for the money, but because it's the right thing to do," she said.

Jesurun wants anyone responsible, as well as any witnesses, to come forward.

"There's a saying in Spanish. It's a saying, todo se paga en la vida. Which means translated, 'what goes around comes around,"' she said.

For more information about TCSO cold cases, click here.

If you have any information on a TCSO cold case, you can:

• SUBMIT A TIP (anonymous option)
• Call and/or leave an anonymous tip: TCSO Tip Line at 512-854-1444 or Crime Stoppers at 512-472-8477
• Email the Cold Case Unit  at coldcase@traviscountytx.gov