Midland, Texas High-Speed Pursuit Crash: Your Family’s Legal Rights After a Child’s Wrongful Death
If you are reading this page, someone you love was taken from you in Midland — a child, a brother, a son — and the grief is still so raw that the idea of calling a lawyer feels like a betrayal of the mourning you need to do. We understand that. We also know that the evidence proving what happened to your family is disappearing right now, on a clock measured in days, not months. The dashcam footage of the pursuit, the dispatch recordings, the black-box data from the vehicles — these records are legally allowed to be erased while you are still making funeral arrangements. That is the single most urgent truth on this page, and everything else we are about to tell you exists to protect your ability to seek accountability before that proof is gone.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are writing to you as the senior trial attorneys who handle Texas wrongful death and catastrophic-injury cases, including cases arising from high-speed pursuits and felony-evading crashes. We are not your lawyers yet, and nothing on this page is legal advice for your specific situation. This is legal information — the governing law, the evidence clocks, the honest case-value reality, and the playbook the other side is already running — so that when you are ready, you call from a position of knowledge, not fear. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
What happened in Midland on June 1, 2026, was not an accident. It was a choice — a choice to flee from law enforcement at high speed through a populated city, and a crash that followed. A 12-year-old boy fought for his life for eight days before succumbing to his injuries. An 18-year-old young man was killed at the scene. Other children were hurt. The pursuit driver now faces two murder charges. The criminal case will unfold in the Midland County courts. But the criminal case is only half of the justice available to your family. The other half is civil — and it runs on a different clock, with different rules, and different evidence.
What Happened in Midland — and Why a Civil Case Exists Separate From the Criminal Prosecution
On June 1, 2026, a high-speed pursuit through the city of Midland ended in a catastrophic crash involving a pickup truck carrying multiple passengers, including 12-year-old Anderson Aguilar and 18-year-old James Baker. Baker was killed at the scene. Anderson sustained critical injuries and was hospitalized for approximately eight days before succumbing on June 9, 2026. The pursuit driver, 18-year-old Roberto Pando III, has been charged with two counts of murder — one for Baker’s death and a subsequent charge filed after Anderson’s death. Combined bonds were set at $3 million, and Pando posted bond on both charges and was released from the Midland County Jail, initially with a GPS ankle monitor as a condition of his release.
The Midland community is mourning. The family’s GoFundMe campaign — “Anderson Aguilar Forever 12” — describes a boy who loved boxing, who trained with his father, who slept with a Superman teddy bear, who was everyone’s baby. The family said:
“His love, laughter, and beautiful spirit will remain with us forever.”
That grief is the ground everything else stands on. But here is what the news coverage does not tell you: the criminal prosecution of the pursuit driver and the civil wrongful death case are two entirely separate legal proceedings. The criminal case is brought by the State of Texas in the name of the people — it seeks prison time, not compensation for your family. The civil case is brought by the family, for the family — it seeks accountability measured in the full value of what was taken. A conviction in the criminal case is not required to win the civil case. The civil case has its own burden of proof, its own evidence, its own deadline, and its own path to recovery.
And here is the part that families in your position almost never learn in time: the evidence that wins the civil case is perishable. It is dying on a schedule right now, while the criminal case moves slowly through the Midland County courthouse. By the time the criminal case reaches a resolution — which can take a year or more — the dashcam footage, the dispatch tapes, and the vehicle data that would prove your civil case may have been legally destroyed. That is why the first thing any family in this situation needs is a preservation letter — a formal demand that every agency and every party involved lock down the evidence before it disappears.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Who Can File, What Damages Are Recoverable, and the Two-Year Deadline
Texas law gives surviving family members the right to bring a wrongful death claim when a death is caused by the “wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default” of another person or entity. This is the Texas Wrongful Death Act, and it is the legal foundation of your family’s civil case. Under this law, the people who may bring the claim are the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the person who died. For a 12-year-old child, that means the parents — and in Texas, both parents have an independent right to recover, whether they are married to each other or not.
What is recoverable under the Texas Wrongful Death Act goes beyond what most people imagine. The law allows recovery for:
- Pecuniary loss — the financial value of the child’s future counsel, advice, care, and services that the family would have received. For a child, this is inherently forward-looking and is proven through vocational and economic experts who project what the child would have contributed to the family over a lifetime.
- Loss of companionship — the loss of the child’s love, affection, and society. This is the human loss, and in Texas, it is compensable in full. For a 12-year-old who was the youngest child, everyone’s baby, who shared a passion for boxing with his father — this loss is not abstract. It is the empty chair at the dinner table, the gym bag that will never be packed again, the nickname that will never be spoken the same way.
- Mental anguish — the grief, sorrow, and emotional suffering of the surviving family members. Texas does not cap mental anguish damages in wrongful death cases against private, non-medical defendants. A Midland jury is allowed to hear the full story of what this family lost and to assign a number that reflects it.
- Loss of inheritance — the projected value of what the child would have accumulated and left to the family over a natural lifetime.
The statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim in Texas is generally two years from the date of death. For Anderson, who died on June 9, 2026, that clock began running on that date. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing at a graveside. It is not. Between the criminal case, the grief, the medical bills, the other injured children, and the sheer weight of trying to function — two years can pass before a family realizes they had a civil claim at all. The deadline is real, and missing it ends the case permanently, no matter how strong the facts are.
There is one more thing to understand about the two-year clock: it runs from the date of death, not the date of the crash. Anderson survived for eight days after the June 1 crash. His death on June 9 started the wrongful death clock. But the crash itself started a separate set of clocks — for the survival action, for evidence preservation, and for any governmental claims that may have shorter notice requirements. Every clock matters.
The Survival Action: Anderson’s Eight Days of Conscious Suffering Are Separately Compensable
Texas law does not treat a death as a single event. It recognizes two separate claims that arise from the same tragedy: the wrongful death claim (described above, which belongs to the family) and the survival action (which belongs to the estate of the person who died). The survival action carries forward the claim that the decedent himself could have brought had he survived — and it is independently significant whenever there is a period of conscious suffering between the injury and death.
For Anderson, that period was approximately eight days. Eight days in a hospital, fighting with all his strength. Eight days of critical injuries, of machines and monitors, of a 12-year-old boy’s body trying to heal from forces it was never built to withstand. The survival action allows the estate to recover for:
- Medical expenses — every dollar spent on hospital care from the crash through the date of death.
- Physical pain and suffering — the conscious, documented pain that Anderson experienced during those eight days. This is proven through medical records, nursing notes, medication administration logs, and the testimony of treating physicians.
- Mental anguish — the emotional suffering of a conscious child who knew he was badly hurt, who was away from his family, who was fighting to survive.
The survival action is not a minor add-on. When a child survives for days in critical condition before succumbing, the pain-and-suffering component of the survival claim can be substantial in its own right. The medical records from those eight days are the proof — and they need to be obtained through authorization promptly, before routine hospital record-management practices allow them to be altered, archived, or lost.
A personal representative must be appointed by a court to bring both the wrongful death claim and the survival action. This is the person Texas law authorizes to stand in the decedent’s shoes and bring the estate’s case. We handle that appointment — it is one of the first procedural steps in building the case, and it can be done while the family is still grieving, without requiring the family to make decisions about the merits of the lawsuit.
Police Pursuit Liability Under the Texas Tort Claims Act: When the Pursuing Agency May Share Responsibility
The pursuit driver is not the only party whose conduct matters in this case. Every high-speed pursuit involves at least two sets of actors: the person fleeing and the law enforcement officers pursuing. In Texas, when the pursuing agency’s own conduct may have contributed to the crash, a claim can be pursued against the governmental entity under the Texas Tort Claims Act — the statute that provides a limited waiver of the sovereign immunity that normally protects government entities from being sued.
A negligent-pursuit claim under the Texas Tort Claims Act asks whether the pursuing agency’s officers violated the agency’s own pursuit policy, operated their vehicles with reckless disregard for public safety, or failed to terminate the chase when the risk to innocent people outweighed the necessity of immediate apprehension. This is not an anti-police argument. It is a safety argument. Law enforcement agencies across the country — including in Texas — have written pursuit policies precisely because pursuits through populated areas are known to kill innocent people. When an agency’s own policy says “terminate the pursuit when the risk to the public becomes unreasonable,” and the pursuit continued anyway, that is a question a civil jury is entitled to examine.
The Texas Tort Claims Act imposes specific requirements that differ from an ordinary negligence claim against a private defendant. There are notice requirements that may apply — and these notice deadlines can be shorter than the two-year wrongful death statute of limitations. There are also statutory damage limitations that cap the amount recoverable from a governmental entity, and those caps must be confirmed for the specific entity involved. Identifying the pursuing agency — whether it was the Midland Police Department, the Midland County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, or another agency — is the first step, and that identification drives the notice deadline and the damage cap that apply.
If you want to understand more about how governmental liability works in Texas vehicle cases, including the Texas Tort Claims Act’s framework, we have written about Texas government vehicle accidents and the TTCA in a dedicated resource that walks through the statutory framework.
The governmental liability theory is the primary path to a defendant with the resources to satisfy the full value of this case. The pursuit driver is 18 years old. His personal assets and insurance coverage are unknown and may be insufficient. But a governmental entity, even with statutory damage caps, represents a far larger recovery source than an individual defendant with unknown coverage. Developing the governmental liability theory requires immediate discovery — the pursuit policy, the training records, the dashcam and bodycam footage, the dispatch communications, and the supervisory approval chain. Every one of those records is on a retention clock.
Gross Negligence and Punitive Damages in Felony-Evading Crash Cases
Texas law allows punitive damages — also called exemplary damages — when a plaintiff proves gross negligence. The standard is specific and demanding. Gross negligence in Texas means conduct that involves:
An extreme degree of risk, a likelihood of serious injury, and actual awareness of that risk followed by conscious indifference to the safety of others.
High-speed flight from law enforcement through a populated city is the textbook example. The pursuit driver knew — or was willfully blind to — the fact that driving at high speed through Midland’s urban grid of arterial roads, residential crossings, and school zones created an extreme degree of risk to every person in or near the vehicle. The decision to flee rather than stop was a choice made with actual awareness of that risk. Continuing to flee was conscious indifference to the safety of everyone in the truck, everyone on the road, and everyone in the neighborhood.
The pending murder charges are powerful evidence in the civil case — not because a conviction is required, but because the factual findings underlying the criminal charges (felony evading arrest with a motor vehicle, the crash, the deaths) establish the predicate conduct that supports both negligence per se and gross negligence. In Texas, a criminal violation can serve as negligence per se in a civil case — meaning the violation itself establishes the breach of the duty of care, shifting the burden to the defendant to prove he lacked capacity or that the violation did not cause the harm. The felony-evading charge, if established, is not just a criminal matter. It is a civil liability engine.
Punitive damages in Texas are not subject to a statutory cap in cases against private, non-medical defendants. A Midland jury that hears the full story — the pursuit, the crash, the eight-day fight, the death of a 12-year-old boy who loved boxing and slept with a Superman teddy bear — is permitted to award punitive damages that reflect the community’s condemnation of the conduct that caused it. Midland’s jury pool is conservative, deeply rooted in family and faith, and holds personal accountability as a core value. In a child-death case caused by felony evading, that conservatism cuts in favor of the family, not against it.
Evidence Preservation: The Records That Are Dying Right Now
This is the section we need you to read most carefully, because it is where time is the enemy. Every record that proves what happened in this pursuit crash is on a retention clock. Some of these clocks are measured in months. Some are measured in days. None of them wait for the criminal case to resolve. None of them wait for the family to be ready.
Dashcam and bodycam footage from all pursuing law enforcement units. This is the single most critical evidence in the case. It establishes the pursuit speed, the duration, the route through Midland, the termination decisions (or the absence of them), the supervisory communications, and the exact mechanism of the crash. Agency retention policies vary — many overwrite or purge footage within 30 to 90 days absent a litigation hold or preservation request. If the pursuing agency’s policy allows destruction of footage after 30 days, and no one has sent a preservation letter, the footage may already be gone.
Dispatch and radio communications recordings. These recordings prove pursuit authorization, supervisory involvement, termination discussions, and the real-time risk assessment by the pursuing agency. They are typically retained on 30-to-90-day schedules. A preservation demand to the agency is urgently needed.
The pursuing agency’s written pursuit policy and all amendments. This document establishes the standard of care for the pursuit decision and whether officers deviated from policy. Policy documents are generally durable, but any post-incident amendments or revisions must be documented through public-records requests immediately — before the current version is quietly updated and the version in effect on June 1 becomes difficult to prove.
Electronic Data Recorder (EDR / black box) data from the pickup truck and the pursuit driver’s vehicle. The EDR captures pre-impact speed, braking input, steering angle, seatbelt status, and impact severity. This data is preserved in the module, but vehicles can be salvaged, scrapped, or repaired. A preservation letter and an inspection order should be issued before any vehicle disposal. Once a vehicle is crushed or sold for salvage, the data is gone.
Anderson’s complete medical records from the incident through death. These document the full nature and extent of his injuries, the treatment course, the pain and suffering, and the causal link to the crash. Records are generally retained per hospital policy and HIPAA, but they should be obtained through authorization promptly to prevent loss or alteration. The nursing flow sheets, medication administration records, and physician progress notes from those eight days are the spine of the survival action.
The criminal case file. Charging documents, the affidavit of probable cause, and discovery materials establish the factual basis for civil liability and may contain admissions, witness statements, and forensic evidence that parallel the civil claims. The criminal case is active — filings are ongoing and should be monitored. Some materials may be subject to sealing or protective orders.
GPS ankle monitor data from the pursuit driver’s initial release. This data may reveal movements, compliance or noncompliance with release conditions, and patterns relevant to his conduct and risk profile. Monitoring-company retention periods vary and should be subpoenaed promptly.
Cell phone records for the pursuit driver. These may establish distracted driving, communications during the pursuit, or other contributory conduct. Carrier retention is typically 90 to 180 days. A litigation hold letter to the carrier is urgently needed.
Scene photographs, measurements, and crash reconstruction data. Skid marks, debris fields, point of impact, sight lines, and road conditions degrade with traffic, weather, and road maintenance. If not already documented by law enforcement, an independent reconstruction team should be dispatched. Every day that passes, the physical evidence at the scene changes.
The preservation letter is the instrument that freezes all of this. It is a formal, written demand sent to every agency, every party, and every third-party data vendor that holds evidence relevant to the case. It puts them on notice that the evidence must be preserved and that destruction after receipt of the letter can result in court sanctions, adverse-inference instructions (where the jury is told they may assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says), and separate spoliation claims. The preservation letter goes out the day you call — not after the criminal case resolves, not after the family has had time to grieve, not after the insurance company reaches out. The day you call.
If your family is also dealing with injuries to other children who were in the vehicle, the evidence-preservation urgency is even greater — their medical records, their ongoing treatment, and their future care needs are all part of the same evidentiary universe. You can learn more about how we approach wrongful death claims and car accident cases in our dedicated practice-area resources.
The Defendant Map: Who Can Be Held Accountable for a Pursuit-Crash Death
A high-speed pursuit crash is not a single-defendant case. Multiple parties may bear responsibility, and identifying every one of them is the difference between a case that fully compensates the family and one that leaves money on the table.
The pursuit driver. Direct liability for causing the crash through high-speed flight from law enforcement. He faces two murder charges, which establish strong civil liability and gross negligence grounds. But he is 18 years old, and his personal assets and insurance coverage are unknown and likely insufficient to satisfy the full value of this case. The fact that he posted $3 million in bonds does not confirm equivalent liquid assets — Texas surety bonds can be secured for a fraction of face value through a bondsman. His coverage, if any, is the first layer to investigate.
The pursuing law enforcement agency. Potential governmental liability if the pursuit was conducted in violation of agency policy, constituted negligent pursuit through a populated urban area, or failed to terminate when the risk to public safety outweighed the necessity of apprehension. This claim proceeds under the Texas Tort Claims Act, subject to sovereign immunity limitations, notice requirements, and damage caps that must be confirmed for the specific entity. This is the primary path to a defendant with resources.
The owner of the vehicle operated by the pursuit driver. If the vehicle belonged to someone other than the driver — a parent, a relative, a friend — that owner may be liable under a negligent entrustment theory if they knew or should have known of the driver’s unfitness to operate the vehicle. This is a discovery target: vehicle registration and title records will identify the owner, and that identification opens a separate liability theory and potentially a separate insurance policy.
The pursuit driver’s automobile liability insurer. If coverage exists, the insurer has a contractual obligation to indemnify covered losses up to policy limits. Texas also has a body of law on insurer duty to settle — when a claim’s value exceeds the policy limits and the insurer fails to settle within those limits, the insurer may be exposed beyond the policy. This is a leverage point that develops as the case matures.
The manufacturer of the pickup truck. This is a secondary theory that requires expert crashworthiness analysis. If vehicle safety systems failed to perform as designed — if airbags did not deploy, if the seatbelts did not restrain, if the vehicle’s structure did not protect the occupants as it should have — a products liability claim may exist against the manufacturer. This theory is not supported by the current reporting and would require expert investigation, but it is a theory to keep open, not to dismiss.
The presence of multiple victims — James Baker’s family, Anderson’s family, and the other injured children — creates an insurance-coverage allocation challenge. The pursuit driver’s liability coverage, if any, will be insufficient for the aggregate of all claims, and priority of recovery may become contested. Early coordination among the families’ counsel — while each family’s independent interests are protected through separate representation — can prevent the insurance company from playing the families against each other.
The Insurance Reality and Case Value: The Collectibility Gap
We need to be honest with you about what this case is worth, because honesty about value is the most important thing a lawyer can give a grieving family. The wrongful death of a 12-year-old child caused by felony evading, combined with an eight-day survival period of conscious suffering, supports a full merit value well into the eight figures under Texas law. A Midland jury that hears the full story — a boy who loved boxing, who was his mother’s “Gordito,” who slept with a Superman teddy bear, who fought for eight days before God called him home — is a jury that Texas trusts to value what was lost. And Texas does not cap non-economic damages in wrongful death cases against private, non-medical defendants.
But full merit value and full collectible value are two different numbers, and the gap between them is the hardest truth in this case. The primary tortfeasor — the pursuit driver — is 18 years old. His personal assets and insurance coverage are unknown and may be a fraction of the case’s full value. The fact that he posted $3 million in bonds does not mean he has $3 million in liquid assets or insurance. In Texas, surety bonds can be secured for a small percentage of face value — sometimes as little as 10% — through a licensed bondsman. His bond postings tell us about the bail system, not about his net worth.
The case’s upper recovery range depends on developing the governmental liability theory against the pursuing agency under the Texas Tort Claims Act. Even if that theory succeeds, the Texas Tort Claims Act imposes statutory damage limitations that cap the governmental recovery — and those caps are likely well below the full merit value of the case. The realistic recovery depends on the combination of whatever coverage the pursuit driver carries, any viable governmental claim, the allocation of shared insurance proceeds among multiple victims, and any additional defendant theories (negligent entrustment, products liability) that develop through discovery.
The honest range, based on the facts currently known, runs from approximately $250,000 on the low end — representing a scenario where the pursuit driver has minimal coverage and no governmental liability is established — to potentially $10,000,000 or more on the high end, representing a scenario where governmental liability is established, multiple coverage sources are identified, and the full value of the wrongful death and survival claims is presented to a Midland jury. That range is wide because the facts that will determine where the case falls — the pursuit driver’s coverage, the pursuing agency’s policy compliance, the vehicle ownership, the number and severity of other victims’ claims — are facts that come out in discovery, not in the news.
We do not promise outcomes. We do not promise dollar figures. What we do promise is that the evaluation of this case will be honest, that every source of recovery will be investigated, and that the family will understand the collectibility picture before any settlement is discussed. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But we can tell you this: the firm has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients across our years of practice, including millions in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases. The $50 million figure is an aggregate — a marketing figure — and every case is different. What is not different is the approach: find every defendant, find every policy, prove every fact, and let the value of the case be driven by the evidence, not by the insurance company’s first offer.
The Medicine of Eight Days in Critical Care: What the Survival Action Proves
Behind the survival action is a medical reality that the defense will try to minimize and that the medical records will prove. When a 12-year-old child is involved in a high-speed crash — the forces generated by a pursuit-level impact in a pickup truck carrying multiple passengers — the injuries are typically multi-system. The mechanism is a combination of rapid deceleration, intrusion, and potential ejection forces that the human body, especially a child’s body, is not built to absorb.
The eight-day survival period means that Anderson was alive, was treated, and in all probability was conscious for at least part of those eight days. The medical records from that period — the emergency department records, the intensive care unit flow sheets, the ventilator settings, the medication administration logs, the surgical reports if surgery was performed, the imaging studies, the nursing notes documenting pain assessments and sedation levels — these are the proof of conscious suffering. A pediatric trauma specialist can translate those records into a narrative that a jury understands: what the child felt, what the child endured, what the medical team did to try to save him, and why, despite everything, the injuries were not survivable.
The defense in a survival action will argue one or more of the following: that the child was unconscious throughout and therefore experienced no pain; that the suffering was brief or medically managed; that the injuries were unsurvivable from the moment of impact, so the eight days of treatment were futile. Each of these arguments has a medical answer, and the answer lives in the records. Sedation does not equal unconsciousness. Medically managed pain does not equal absence of pain. And the fact that injuries were ultimately unsurvivable does not mean the child did not suffer during the fight to survive. The survival action is the law’s recognition that those eight days matter — that the child’s experience between the crash and death is a separately compensable injury, and that the family is entitled to recover for it.
If other children in the vehicle survived with serious injuries, their medical stories are also part of the civil case. Brain injuries, in particular, can have delayed presentations — a child who seemed alert at the scene can deteriorate over hours, and the full extent of a traumatic brain injury may not be apparent for weeks or months. For families dealing with injured children, understanding the mechanism and diagnosis of brain injuries is part of protecting the child’s long-term legal and medical interests.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How Each Move Is Countered
The insurance industry has a playbook for cases like this, and it starts running within hours of the crash — before the family has left the hospital, before the funeral is planned, before anyone has mentioned the word “lawyer.” Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before joining this firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to value, delay, and devalue claims. He knows the plays because he used to run them. Here is what the other side is doing, and here is how each move is countered.
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded statement. Within days, someone friendly will call a family member — sometimes the grieving parent — and ask to “just tell us what happened” or “just answer a few questions so we can process the claim.” The call is recorded. Every word is designed to be quoted against the family later. The questions are engineered to get the family member to say “I’m doing okay” or “he didn’t suffer” or “we’re not looking to sue anyone” — phrases that will be produced in discovery and used to minimize damages or argue the family accepted responsibility. The counter: do not speak with any insurance adjuster. Not once. Not even to be polite. Every communication goes through counsel. The adjuster is not your friend, and the call is not a courtesy.
Play 2: The fast settlement check with a release attached. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the medical records are complete, sometimes before the family has even buried their child. Attached to the back of the check, or enclosed with it, is a release — a document that, once signed, extinguishes the family’s right to bring a lawsuit. The check is small. The release is forever. The counter: never sign anything from an insurance company without having it reviewed by a lawyer. The release may waive rights the family does not even know they have — including the survival action, the governmental liability claim, and claims against parties the insurer has not even mentioned.
Play 3: The “he was partly at fault” argument. In a case involving a pickup truck with multiple passengers, the defense may try to argue that the passengers assumed the risk by getting in the vehicle, or that they were contributorily negligent in some way. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar — meaning a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault, and is barred entirely only if they are found 51% or more at fault. The defense will work to pin percentage points on the victims, because every point is money. The counter: a 12-year-old child does not assume the risk of a high-speed pursuit by getting in a truck. The pursuit driver’s felony evading is the cause. The comparative-fault argument is a defense strategy, not a legal reality — and it is defeated by the facts, by the criminal charges, and by the gross negligence standard.
Play 4: The surveillance and social-media watch. The insurance company may monitor the family’s social media accounts, conduct surveillance on family members, and look for any post, photo, or activity that can be used to argue the family is not suffering as much as they claim, or that a surviving injured child is “fine.” The counter: the family should not post anything about the case, the crash, the criminal proceedings, or their grief on social media. They should not discuss the incident with anyone outside their immediate circle and counsel. Privacy settings should be reviewed. This is not paranoia — it is standard insurance practice.
Play 5: The “you have plenty of time” delay. The adjuster may tell the family there is no rush, that they have two years, that they should take their time and focus on healing. Meanwhile, the evidence is dying — the dashcam footage is being overwritten, the dispatch recordings are being purged, the vehicle is being salvaged. The counter: the two-year statute of limitations is a filing deadline, not a preparation deadline. The evidence-preservation work starts the day you call a lawyer. Waiting to call is the one decision that cannot be undone.
How a Pursuit-Crash Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is how a case like this is actually built, step by step, from the day a family calls to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the pursuing law enforcement agency, to the Midland Police Department, to the Midland County Sheriff’s Office if involved, to the Texas Department of Public Safety if involved, to any third-party data vendor (the GPS monitoring company, the cell phone carriers), and to the pursuit driver or his insurer. The letter demands that every record — dashcam, bodycam, dispatch, pursuit policy, EDR data, cell records, GPS data — be preserved immediately and that destruction after receipt of the letter will be treated as spoliation. The vehicles are located and inspected before they can be salvaged. The medical records are requested through authorization.
Weeks two through eight. The personal representative is appointed by the court — the person authorized to bring the estate’s case. The criminal case file is monitored. Public-records requests are sent to the pursuing agency for its pursuit policy, training records, prior pursuit incidents, and the dashcam and dispatch recordings. The EDR data is downloaded by a qualified expert before the vehicle is repaired or destroyed. The medical records are obtained, organized, and reviewed by a pediatric trauma specialist who will serve as an expert witness. The scene is photographed and measured by an accident reconstructionist if law enforcement’s documentation is incomplete.
Months two through six. The complaint is filed. Discovery begins — the formal process of demanding documents, taking depositions, and building the evidentiary record. The pursuing agency’s officers are deposed about the pursuit decision, the supervisory approval, the termination analysis, and the policy compliance. The pursuit driver is deposed, if he is available and not asserting his Fifth Amendment right in the pending criminal case (which creates its own strategic dynamic). The vehicle owner, if different from the driver, is identified and deposed. The insurance coverage is confirmed — every policy, every layer, every exclusion.
Months six through eighteen. The experts are retained: a police-practices expert on pursuit standards, an accident reconstructionist for vehicle dynamics and impact analysis, a pediatric trauma specialist to explain the eight-day course of suffering, and a forensic economist for loss of earning capacity. The life-care plan, if other children were seriously injured, is built by a certified life-care planner. Mediation is evaluated once the full extent of all victims’ injuries is documented and the governmental liability discovery has matured. A Stowers-style demand — a formal settlement demand that puts the insurer at risk of exceeding policy limits if it fails to settle — is evaluated once coverage is confirmed.
The number at the end is built from all of this. It is not a round number picked from a formula. It is the sum of the medical bills, the funeral costs, the projected lost earning capacity, the life-care costs for surviving injured children, the pain and suffering of the eight-day survival period, the mental anguish of the parents and siblings, the loss of companionship of a 12-year-old boy who was everyone’s baby, and the punitive damages that a Midland jury would award for felony evading through a populated city. That number is presented — in a demand letter, at mediation, or to a jury — and the case resolves or it does not.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Never to Do
If you are reading this page within the first days or weeks of the crash, here is the practical roadmap. These are the things that protect the case and protect the family.
Do: Get the medical records for every person who was in the vehicle. Anderson’s records from the eight-day hospitalization are the spine of the survival action. Any other injured child’s records are the foundation of their separate claims. Request them through the hospital’s medical-records department with a signed authorization. Do not wait for the hospital to “send them automatically” — they will not.
Do: Preserve every physical item related to the crash. Clothing, personal effects, photographs taken at the scene or the hospital, the GoFundMe page and its comments, any text messages or social media posts from the day of the crash — all of this is evidence. Save it. Back it up. Do not delete anything.
Do: Identify the pursuing law enforcement agency. Was it Midland Police? Midland County Sheriff? DPS? Multiple agencies? The pursuing agency drives the governmental liability theory and the evidence-preservation demands. If you know which agency was involved, write it down. If you do not, a lawyer can determine it through the crash report and public-records requests.
Do: Talk to a lawyer before talking to any insurance company. This is not about being adversarial. This is about not giving the insurance company free evidence to use against your family. The adjuster’s call is recorded. The questions are designed. The answers are permanent. A lawyer can handle every communication with the insurer, and the family never has to take that call.
Never: Give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster. Not the pursuit driver’s insurer, not the vehicle owner’s insurer, not the pursuing agency’s insurer, not your own insurer — not without counsel. The recorded statement is the single most common way families accidentally damage their own case.
Never: Sign any document from an insurance company. Releases, authorizations, settlement agreements — every document an insurance company sends is designed to limit or extinguish the family’s rights. Nothing gets signed without a lawyer reading it first.
Never: Post about the crash, the criminal case, or your grief on social media. Not a tribute post, not an update, not a photograph, not a comment on someone else’s post. The insurance company is watching. Surveillance and social-media monitoring are standard practice. Every post is a potential exhibit.
Never: Discuss the case with anyone outside your immediate family and your lawyer. Friends, extended family, coworkers, church members — anyone can be contacted by an investigator. The only conversations that are protected are those with your lawyer.
Never: Wait. The evidence is dying. The dashcam footage is on a 30-to-90-day clock. The dispatch recordings are on the same clock. The vehicle can be salvaged. The scene is degrading. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we file a civil lawsuit if the criminal case is still pending?
Yes. The criminal case and the civil case are separate proceedings with separate burdens of proof, separate evidence, and separate timelines. The criminal case does not need to resolve before a civil wrongful death claim can be filed. In fact, filing the civil case early can be an advantage — it allows your legal team to issue preservation letters, conduct discovery, and freeze evidence before it disappears, even while the criminal case is still moving through the Midland County courts. The statute of limitations for the civil case runs on its own clock — generally two years from the date of death — and that clock does not pause while the criminal case is pending.
The pursuit driver was released on bond. Does that affect our civil case?
No. The criminal bond system and civil liability are completely separate mechanisms. The fact that the pursuit driver posted bond and was released from the Midland County Jail has no legal effect on your family’s right to bring a civil wrongful death and survival action. Civil justice does not depend on the pursuit driver remaining incarcerated. The civil case seeks compensation from the at-fault parties and their insurers — it is not contingent on the criminal case’s outcome, the bond status, or the length of any eventual criminal sentence. Many families find this deeply frustrating — watching the person who caused their child’s death walk out of jail — but the civil case provides a separate path to accountability that does not depend on the criminal justice system’s timeline or its decisions about pretrial release.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
The statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim in Texas is generally two years from the date of death. For Anderson, who died on June 9, 2026, that deadline runs from that date. However, if any governmental entity is a potential defendant — such as the pursuing law enforcement agency — the Texas Tort Claims Act may impose shorter notice requirements that must be satisfied before a lawsuit can be filed. Those notice deadlines can be as short as a matter of months from the date of the incident, and missing them can bar the governmental claim entirely, even if the two-year wrongful death deadline has not yet passed. The safest approach is to contact a lawyer immediately, so that every applicable deadline — the two-year wrongful death SOL, any TTCA notice requirement, and any other statutory clock — is identified and calendared.
What if the pursuit driver does not have enough insurance to cover our loss?
This is the collectibility gap, and it is real. An 18-year-old pursuit driver’s personal insurance coverage may be a fraction of the full value of this case. But the pursuit driver is not the only potential source of recovery. The pursuing law enforcement agency may be liable under the Texas Tort Claims Act. The owner of the vehicle — if different from the driver — may be liable under a negligent entrustment theory, with their own insurance. The vehicle manufacturer may be liable if safety systems failed. And if the pursuit driver’s insurer fails to settle a claim that clearly exceeds the policy limits, the insurer itself may be exposed to liability beyond the policy under Texas’s duty-to-settle framework. Finding every source of recovery is part of the work — and it is work that begins with the investigation, not with a acceptance of the first coverage number the insurer discloses.
Our family is not the only one affected — other children were injured. How does that work?
When multiple people are injured or killed in the same crash, their claims are related but separate. Each family has its own wrongful death claim, its own survival action, and its own right to counsel. The insurance coverage available from the at-fault driver — if any — is shared among all the victims, which means the total coverage may be divided in ways that leave individual families undercompensated. This is why early coordination among the families’ separate counsel is important — not to merge the cases, but to prevent the insurance company from using the multiple-claimant situation to drive down settlements by playing one family against another. Each family’s independent interests must be protected through separate representation, but the strategic coordination — on evidence preservation, on insurance allocation, on the governmental liability theory — can benefit everyone.
The pursuit was conducted by law enforcement. Can we really sue the police?
The question is not whether you can sue the police — it is whether the pursuing agency’s conduct, evaluated against its own written pursuit policy and the standards of the Texas Tort Claims Act, contributed to the crash. Law enforcement agencies in Texas operate vehicular pursuits under agency-specific written policies that govern when a pursuit may be initiated, when it must be terminated, and what supervisory oversight is required. If the pursuing agency violated its own policy — or continued a pursuit through a populated urban area when the risk to the public outweighed the necessity of apprehension — the Texas Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of sovereign immunity that may allow a claim. This is not about being anti-police. It is about the same principle that applies to every defendant: when someone’s choices contribute to a child’s death, the law allows the family to ask a jury to hold them accountable.
How much is a wrongful death case worth for a child?
There is no formula. The value of a wrongful death case for a 12-year-old child in Midland County, Texas, depends on the unique facts of the child’s life, the family’s relationship, the mechanism of the death, the severity of the suffering, and the conduct of the defendants. Texas law allows recovery for pecuniary loss (the projected value of the child’s future counsel, advice, and services), loss of companionship, mental anguish, and loss of inheritance. When the death was caused by gross negligence — as felony evading through a populated city arguably is — punitive damages are also available, and Texas does not cap punitive damages against private, non-medical defendants. The full merit value of this case, presented to a Midland jury, could be well into the eight figures. The collectible value depends on the available insurance and assets, the viability of the governmental liability claim, and the allocation among multiple victims. An honest lawyer will explain both numbers — the merit value and the collectible value — before any settlement is discussed.
What does it cost to hire a wrongful death lawyer?
Our firm works on a contingency fee. That means we do not charge an hourly rate, and we do not bill for our time. Our fee is a percentage of the recovery — 33.33% if the case resolves before trial, and 40% if the case goes to trial. If there is no recovery, there is no fee. The initial consultation is free, and it is confidential. We advance the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witness fees, the deposition costs, the records fees — and those costs are repaid from the recovery at the end. A family in crisis never has to write a check to this firm to get the investigation started. The call costs nothing. The consultation costs nothing. The work costs nothing unless we win.
Why This Firm — Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
We are not a billboard law firm. We are not a volume practice. We are a trial firm that takes the cases other firms find too complex, too hard to prove, or too difficult to collect — and we handle them the way they deserve to be handled: with the full force of our training, our experience, and our refusal to accept less than what a case is worth.
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of this firm. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — more than 27 years. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, including the bankruptcy court. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston and his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas, and the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association (Million Dollar Member). He speaks Spanish. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and he approaches every case the way a reporter approaches a story — find the facts, find the documents, find the proof, and then tell the truth to a jury. You can read more about Ralph Manginello’s background and credentials on his attorney page.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He has been licensed in Texas since December 6, 2012 — more than 13 years. He is also admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston and his B.B.A. in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born and raised in Sugar Land. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Before joining this firm, Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm — he knows how claims are valued from the inside, how adjusters set reserves in the first 48 hours, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is conducted, and how delay tactics work. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. You can read more about Lupe Peña’s background and the insider advantage on his attorney page.
The firm has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients over our years of practice. That figure is an aggregate — a marketing figure — and every case is different. What does not change is the approach: we handle wrongful death claims and car accident cases with the same preparation, the same evidence discipline, and the same refusal to settle for less than the case is worth. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the track record is real, and the approach is proven.
If Your Family Is Facing This
If your child was killed in a high-speed pursuit crash in Midland, or if your child was injured in the same crash that took Anderson Aguilar’s life, the most important thing we can tell you is this: the evidence is dying, the clock is running, and the insurance company is already working. You do not have to be ready to file a lawsuit today. You do not have to know whether you want to pursue a case. You do not have to have stopped crying. What you need — today — is for someone to send the preservation letter that freezes the evidence before it disappears. That is the one thing that cannot wait, and it is the one thing we can do the day you call.
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And we serve your family fully in Spanish — Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts complete consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, because the family that prays in Spanish deserves a lawyer who speaks it too.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. That is 1-888-288-9911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a live staff member, not an answering service. If you are reading this at 2 a.m., call at 2 a.m. If you are reading this from a hospital waiting room, call from the waiting room. If you are not ready to call today, save this page. But please — do not let the evidence die before you have had the chance to use it.
Anderson was forever 12. His family described a boy who loved boxing, who loved Bruno Mars, who was his mother’s “Gordito,” who slept with a Superman teddy bear. His love, laughter, and beautiful spirit will remain with the people who knew him. What we can do — what the civil justice system exists to do — is make sure that the people responsible for taking him are held accountable in full, and that his family is not left to bear the financial weight of this tragedy on top of the grief that no amount of money will ever fix.
Call us. The evidence is waiting. So are we.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC (Attorney911) is not counsel of record for any party in the June 1, 2026 Midland pursuit crash. Nothing on this page creates an attorney-client relationship. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. The firm works on a contingency fee: no fee unless we win.