A Nogales man pending trial for the December 2019 killing of his infant son’s mother has died after purportedly hanging himself in a Cochise County jail cell, a sheriff’s spokeswoman announced Monday.
Aaron M. Estrada-Buelna was pronounced deceased at a Tucson hospital after being airlifted Saturday morning from the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee. He had been housed in Cochise County’s jail in Bisbee since Dec. 14 at the request of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, according to Carol Capas with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office.
Estrada-Buelna, 29, was being held in lieu of $3 million bail on multiple felonies stemming from a Dec. 9 incident in which barricaded himself in an apartment for several hours with his infant son. The child was unharmed when a SWAT unit breached the apartment, but officers found the baby’s mother, 31, dead in one of the bedrooms.
Court records in Santa Cruz County show the woman filed a paternity action against Estrada-Buelna last year. An order for genetic testing was issued Dec. 3.
Other court records show Estrada-Buelna was scheduled to appear in the Nogales Justice Court on Feb. 19 in the murder case as well as a case from July in which he was accused of aggravated assault by impeding breathing. Information about the July incident was not available Monday evening. It’s unclear whether Estrada-Buelna was actually transported to Nogales last week for the proceeding.
In 2013, Estrada-Buelna pleaded guilty to a Class 4 felony of domestic violence aggravated assault. He was also arrested in 2010 during a domestic disturbance and later pleaded guilty to threatening to use his alleged cartel connections to harm several law enforcement officers in the Nogales area.