The San Antonio family spent years attending proceedings after an ordinary dinner trip ended in a fatal carjacking.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — For more than three years, Larry Brister’s family lived with two timelines: the few minutes in February 2023 that left him mortally injured and the far slower court process that followed. That second timeline has now reached a defining endpoint, with all three defendants connected to the 80-year-old man’s carjacking sentenced to prison.
The final case concluded with a 10-year prison sentence for Miguel Acosta, 20, who pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery. His sentencing followed the 25-year prison term imposed on Zachariah Aguirre, 19, in the murder case and the 20-year sentence given to Gabriel Urbano, 19, on aggravated robbery convictions. The three men were minors when Brister was attacked. Their cases continued through his lengthy hospitalization, his death, repeated court delays and years in which his relatives said they were waiting for both answers and legal closure.
That wait had become public by November 2025. At the time, none of the three cases had reached a final resolution, and Brister’s relatives told KSAT that hearings and anticipated trial dates had been delayed repeatedly. Sandra Brister, his widow, said the family had once expected proceedings to begin much earlier. Instead, another year approached with the cases unresolved. Inside the family home, relatives said, reminders of Brister remained untouched, including the chair where he had spent evenings with them. The stalled court calendar had become another part of their grief.
The crime itself had unfolded with startling speed. On Feb. 11, 2023, Brister went out to get dinner near his North Side neighborhood. Police were called around 7 p.m. to Walker Ranch and Stonewood Drive, where officers found him in the road with injuries across his body. Brister was in such serious condition that he could not provide officers with an account of what had happened. Investigators determined that he had been assaulted and that his truck was gone. What began as a short trip from home became the start of a months-long medical crisis.
Authorities eventually identified three teenagers in connection with the attack. San Antonio police announced their arrests in March 2023, saying the suspects were 15 and 16 years old and had been charged with aggravated robbery. Because they were juveniles, police did not release their names at the time. The public record expanded as the cases moved forward. Prosecutors later said Aguirre had approached Brister and caused him to get out of his truck under the belief that he needed to inspect a tire. Aguirre then took the driver’s seat, authorities said, and Brister was dragged while trying to prevent the theft.
For Brister’s relatives, however, the case was never only a police narrative. It became a daily medical ordeal. Family members described numerous serious injuries, including broken bones and brain bleeds. Sandra Brister said her husband remained hospitalized as doctors treated the effects of the attack. His relatives watched some injuries improve while other complications persisted. Shortly before his death, the family moved him into hospice care, a decision his widow described at the time as extraordinarily difficult after months in which he had struggled to recover.
Brister died in July 2023. His death changed the legal landscape. The case was sent to homicide investigators, and allegations against the defendants were elevated after prosecutors linked his death to the injuries from the carjacking. It also changed the family’s wait. They were no longer hoping Brister would recover and eventually return to the life he had led before the attack. Instead, they entered a criminal process focused on a killing while mourning a man relatives remembered for tennis, yard work, music, dancing and time with his children and grandchildren.
Years later, that distinction mattered in court. When Aguirre was sentenced in July 2026, Sandra Brister described how ordinary her husband’s plans had been that February evening. He was going to pick up hamburgers. When he did not return, she went looking for him and came upon the aftermath near the entrance to their neighborhood. She told the court about strangers who had stopped to help. Among them, she said, was former San Antonio Spurs player Bruce Bowen. The account shifted attention away from the mechanics of the prosecution and back toward the moment the family realized something terrible had happened.
Aguirre received the longest punishment of the three defendants: 25 years in prison in the murder case. Prosecutors said he was 15 when the crime occurred. District Attorney Joe Gonzales said after the sentencing that the punishment could not bring Brister back but reflected the consequences of the defendant’s conduct. For the family, the proceeding was also the first of three long-awaited resolutions. Two co-defendants still had to be sentenced, meaning the court chapter was not yet finished even after the murder case reached judgment.
Urbano’s case came next. He pleaded no contest to two aggravated robbery charges and was sentenced to concurrent 20-year terms. Court records showed that prosecutors dismissed a murder charge and another aggravated robbery count under the agreement. One of the convictions involved a separate robbery case in which prosecutors accused Urbano and Aguirre of criminal conduct involving another victim. The negotiated outcome meant Urbano was not sentenced for Brister’s murder, but he received a lengthy prison term on the robbery convictions.
Acosta’s 10-year sentence then completed the trio of cases. He had pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery earlier in 2026. His punishment was shorter than those imposed on Aguirre and Urbano, reflecting the different charges and resolutions in the three prosecutions. Gonzales said after Acosta was sentenced that accountability mattered even though no court result could undo the loss experienced by Brister’s family. With that judgment, the family no longer faced the same uncertainty it had described publicly less than a year earlier about when all three prosecutions would finally end.
The completed cases also show how much changed between the initial arrests and the final sentences. In the spring of 2023, the suspects were three unnamed juveniles accused of aggravated robbery. Brister was alive but badly injured. By the time the court process ended in 2026, Brister had been dead for more than three years, the defendants were adults, one had been sentenced in a murder case and the others had resolved aggravated robbery charges. The legal record had grown while the central fact for Brister’s family remained unchanged: a routine trip from home had cost them a husband, father and grandfather.
His relatives have repeatedly emphasized who Brister was before the attack. His widow described a man who stayed active at 80, played tennis twice a week, helped neighbors with outdoor work and enjoyed Mexican music. The couple had two adult daughters and three grandchildren. Those family details provided a counterweight to descriptions of his injuries and to the legal language that came to dominate public records. They also explain why the long delays weighed so heavily on relatives who said their lives had remained divided into the period before Feb. 11, 2023, and everything that followed.
For Brister’s relatives, the latest sentencing removes the uncertainty that followed them through repeated court dates and postponements. They no longer have to wait for another defendant’s case to be resolved. What remains is the loss they described throughout the proceedings: Brister left home for a routine dinner trip at age 80, spent his final months dealing with the injuries from the attack and died before the court cases reached their conclusions.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.