Deborah Flores
Appearances
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
They were just in the dark as we were because nobody had a clue who did this to my son.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
When Anton was little, he was so mellow and so quiet. I never had to worry that he was getting into anything.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
One day, I go to pick him up from school and the teacher says to me, you might want to have a talk with Aaron. They called him Aaron because he came to school today with his pants on backwards. You know, what's the reason that this kindergartner is coming to school with his pants on backwards? There used to be this group.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they're called Criss Cross Kids. He loved them. And their gimmick was they wore their pants backwards.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
She said, I have never in all my years of, you know, being a kindergarten teacher, I have never seen a child do that.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
He liked old music, old cars, old clothes. And I don't mean retro-type clothes. I mean zoot suits and shiny shoes.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
So he was always asking me, Mom, do we have any toothbrushes? I need a toothbrush. But he used an electric toothbrush.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
So he would clean all of his shoes with a toothbrush. He had this thing about always looking crisp and clean and just always looking nice. If that's my biggest worry, then he can have as many toothbrushes as he wants.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
His uncle owns a shop. They install hydraulics and things like that. But he would sit in his room and work on car models.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
The night of his murder, he was getting together with a bunch of his friends and they were going to hang out one last time that they might all be able to get together at the same time and just hang out at one of the kids' house and play video games and just, you know, goof around at the house and nothing spectacular, just they wanted to just hang out with each other.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I'd never heard any of this stuff before. Where were these people getting this from? Were they just making it up? Were they just curious? But it made me think, if they're thinking that, how many more people are thinking that about my son?
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
So I called the detective. I had him come over. The detectives that came over, I made them sit in my living room for several hours while they watched home movies of my son when he was... four years old, laughing, dancing. I made them watch it all over and over. And I told them, I said, this is my son that I want you to see. And this is how I want you to think of my son.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I told them, I said, I'm hearing all these crazy things that people think my son was into that he wasn't. So if they're thinking that, anybody can be thinking that, including you, I told them. And I don't want you to think of my son that way. Because then you won't work as hard.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
And they just looked at me. They said, we've never had anyone do this before.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I was a little angry towards some of my neighbors. And I couldn't imagine with that many people that no one saw or heard anything.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
dozens and dozens and dozens of signs and we put them on sticks and we stood out there from early in the morning until dark just holding up these signs with the hotline for the police department or anonymous number they could call if they had any information
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
So one day, the phone rings, and my boyfriend had answered the phone, and he comes running upstairs with the phone, and it was Detective Blass.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
My name is Deborah Flores. I am a mother of two boys.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
So one day, the phone rings, and it was Detective Blass. And he told me that there was a new cold case department, that he now worked there. His voice was very soothing, like he knew what he was doing. So I listened to him and I thought, okay, I've heard all this before. Oh, we're going to find him. We're going to catch whoever did this. But there was something different about him.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
He said to me that this is my job now. He said, I plan on staying here. I don't plan on leaving here. And I won't stop working on your son's case until we catch who did this.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
My wardrobe became a pair of black pants and a referee shirt. I became a mom at a young age, and so it was a little bit difficult to learn the ropes, but it was definitely life-changing.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
They would hang out in the bedroom, laying on the floor, watching scary movies. And I can hear them upstairs, you know, screaming and just carrying on. And they had fun together. They had a lot of fun together.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I had gotten some advice from the person who was working on getting him to the Job Corps. And he said to me, when it gets close to the time that your son is going to be
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
leaving we always tell the parents this you know try to keep your son focused on the fact that they're getting ready to leave you know not let them go out and you know run around with their friends he goes the reason I'm telling you this is because it never fails right before some of these kids get ready to leave something happens
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
It was Christmas time. We had gone to the mall. He was about four years old. And back then, they were selling these action figures. And the kids all went crazy over them. You could hardly find them in the store. And you could get on a waiting list. So we get the toy. Before we even got out of the store, he already had it out of the bag and was ear to ear smiling on his face. He was so happy.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
We walked out and there was a Marine standing there and he was very tall. There was a Toys for Tots barrel right next to the Marine. He said, Mom, how come there's an Army guy standing in front of the toy store? I said, it's Christmas time, so a lot of kids aren't as fortunate as you. They don't receive a lot of toys or presents for Christmas. So people put toys in the barrel.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
They get delivered to kids that don't have anything. He stops. And I said, what's wrong? Come on. He looked at me and he turned around and he started running. So I went after him, and he ran back to the toy store. And he had this toy in his tiny little hands that he had waited so long for. And he threw it in the barrel. And then he turned around and ran back to me. And I said, what are you doing?
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
He said, it's okay, Mom. I wanted to give it to a kid that doesn't have anything anymore. That's the person I wanted everybody to know. Because he still had that when somebody took him from us. He still had that.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I just wanted him to stay home and spend time with me and family because we're not going to be able to see him for a while. I didn't tell him what the Job Corps person told me. I just told him that, you know, just hang out here for the next week or so. And he didn't like it because friends kept, I think, calling him and saying, hey, let's hang out.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
We're not going to, you know, be able to do this much longer.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
It was a Sunday. He finally came out of his room. He said, Mom, I'm going to go with my friends and we're just going to go play video games at the friend's house. And I said, I thought you were going to stay here and hang out with me. He said, Mom, I live here. I have plenty of time to be with you. He said, I won't be gone that long. I'm just going to go for a little while.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
He goes, I can't stand being in the house in my room like this. I need to get some fresh air. I need to get outside and get some fresh air.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
And I just remember being in the kitchen. It was one of my son's friends. And they said, I think you better come outside. I think someone just shot Aaron. I just dropped the phone and I ran to my boyfriend and I said, someone just called here and said to go outside because somebody shot Anton. And I ran. I ran towards the door. We didn't know what had been going on outside.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
We didn't know if there was any danger out there still. I didn't care. I just wanted to get to my son. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was just lights and sirens everywhere. Fire trucks, ambulance. The street was blocked off. There was crime scene tape tied around everything. All the neighbors were outside. There were police just walking the streets with flashlights.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
Where they took my son, not knowing if he was even alive. I tried not to think of the worst, only because I just couldn't process if that was the truth. I was just in shock. Have you ever seen the Charlie Brown cartoon on TV at Christmastime? The voice, it's not even... Words, it's just sound. That's what I heard.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
thing around me was just spinning really fast. I didn't feel anything. I was numb, almost too much for one person to even bear because it's the most tragic, just horrific thing that can happen to a parent. It's not supposed to happen.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
They had us go to the police station because they wanted to question us to see if they could find out if we knew why this would have happened. They asked, you know, what we did that day, where he was during the day, who his friends were. I had given them every name of every kid that I thought he ever knew and their phone numbers by the time they were even asking me for it.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I wanted them to hurry up and do their job. After we were there for about several hours, they finally let us go.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I thought to myself that a lot of people get shot, you know, and survive. So why should my son be any different?
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
One of the detectives told me that my son had died and I just lost control of everything. He just said it. I wanted out of there. I said, let me out of here. Just let me out of here. I was so angry. that I had been stuck there all that time while my son was in the hospital. And I had no idea when it had happened. Was he still alive when he got to the hospital? I don't know.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
Nobody's answering any of these questions for me. So I just collapsed. I couldn't walk. I couldn't say anything but sit there on the ground. Like I couldn't even get up. They all helped me up. My boyfriend, my dad, and my best friend.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
When you first walk in, there's a room off to the side and they call it the quiet room. And that's where they put family members until the doctor comes to tell them that their loved one died. And it keeps them separate from the public in the waiting room. You can't really hear them crying. So when we got to the hospital, we walked in. One of my co-workers came around and
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
She knows all too well what it means when they're led in that room and told to wait. I don't know what came over me, but as soon as that door opened and the doctor walked in, I already knew because of the room I was sitting in. And I could see on everyone's face when I walked in because I know them all.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
I've never turned down an opportunity to keep what happened to him in the public's eye. Just be relentless, be on that corner every weekend, put flyers up if they got torn down, do interviews, do whatever I could think of. I wanted them to see my son because there's always a possibility that the right person could be listening.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
The doctor confirmed it. He told me that he had been shot. And basically, he died from blood loss. He bled to death. And I was so angry at him. I just remember yelling at him, you know, why didn't you save my son? Why didn't you give him more blood? Why didn't you take him to surgery? Why didn't you save my son? One of the nurses came in and she asked me if I wanted to see my son.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
And I said, of course I want to see my son. I started to prepare myself, but somebody stopped me and said, are you sure you want to go in there? And I was confused. Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I want to go in there? And apparently it was because of their efforts. There's sometimes, you know, things they have to do to try to save someone's life.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
And once you do that, I don't know how to say this other than to just say it, but you can't put them back together. So they made me stand there for a few minutes and think about it. I want you to just stand here for a few minutes and think about it. If you still want to go in, I'll take you in. Think about where you're at and what they probably had to do to try to save him.
Anatomy of Murder
Unsolved: Silent Night (Aaron Anthony “Antone” Breaux)
And is that the last vision you want of your son to stay with you for the rest of your life? It wasn't. So sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice.