Caroline “Caro” Pena was still being raced between hospitals when detectives later wrote that two sisters had already washed and changed. Police say house cameras in Del Rio recorded the 32-year-old mother of five arriving in a black Dodge pickup, then Amaya “Cookie” Diaz, 19, and Kitty Mia Diaz, 21, arriving in a black Chrysler 300 with their friend Kyandra Renee Faz, 21. The complaint describes Amaya approaching Pena with an object believed to be a knife, a strike to the back, blood on Pena’s shirt, and the other two women joining before everyone scattered. Pena reached a local emergency room after 2 p.m. and died near 9 p.m. in San Antonio. In the hours between the clash and the handcuffs, officers said Kitty and Amaya were no longer in the clothes from the video and their hair was wet. Arrest footage then showed new outfits and easy faces. Each woman was charged with murder and held on a five-million-dollar bond. Relatives were left with five children, two of them autistic, the youngest almost three. The case is still a charge file, not a verdict. The shower is why the file feels unfinished in the worst way.

The clothing swap is the detail people repeat when they cannot repeat the medical chart. Kitty Diaz was seen in video of the alleged attack in a pink top and jeans. By arrest she was in a revealing black romper printed with hands, and police said her hair and her sister’s hair were wet. Caroline Pena existed in another image that flashed across a local Facebook page and vanished: a shirt marked with blood in what friends called her last standing minutes. Zelina Ochoa said the picture showed three young women who arrived with weapons and a mother who arrived with her hands. Pena was moved from Val Verde Regional Medical Center to San Antonio because the wounds were too severe. She did not survive the night. Kitty, Amaya, and Faz were charged with murder. Combined bonds were reported at fifteen million dollars. In a town small enough that Pena’s uncle said he had worked with one of their relatives for thirty years, the romper landed like mockery. Courts will weigh evidence. The outfit already told the public what the afternoon felt like.

The charging papers list three young women. The household list is longer and younger. Pena’s children ranged from sixteen down to a girl going on three. Two are autistic. After the Thursday confrontation on East Tenth Street, relatives became parents overnight and funeral planners in the same breath. Police say residential video captured the arrivals, the fight, blood on Pena’s shirt, and the separation that followed. A circulating pH๏τograph of her wounded and upright was pulled down. She died hours later after transfer.

Detectives noted wet hair and missing original clothes on two sisters. Cameras at the arrest caught smiles. An uncle would not guess the motive and said the children were taking it the hardest, made worse because the families were already connected. High bonds built a wall around the jail. They built nothing around the bedrooms. The public keeps reading because the legal story has video and the human story has a toddler who still needed a mother that night.

Source: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15942757/Shameless-final-act-smiling-sisters-Cookie-Kitty-arrested-shocking-knife-attack-doting-mother.html