A grieving mother is devastated when she learns that a Texas county secretly donated her daughter’s body to science and dismembered and sold her parts.

Aurimar Hurriago Villegas, 21, was sitting in the back seat of a vehicle with two acquaintances in suburban Dallas on October 29, 2022, when 25-year-old Shardrel Webb fired a gun into the back of the car, NBC News reports.

Paramedics later found her slumped in the back seat, dead from a single gunshot wound to the head.

But without permission from Villegas’ family, county officials donated her body to the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

She then became one of 2,350 people whose remains were sent to the Fort Worth school under an agreement with two Texas counties to be used for scientific research, medical training and profit through the Willed Body Program.

Under the agreement, any bodies declared “unclaimed” could be sent to school — even if county coroners, medical facilities and others repeatedly failed to contact family members before declaring the bodies “unclaimed.”

For Villegas, that meant dismembering her body and assigning amounts of money to the parts not damaged by the gunshot wound – including $900 for her torso and $703 for her legs.

Other remains were cremated and buried with strangers in a Dallas field as Villegas’ mother, Arelis Coromoto Villegas, fought desperately to bring her daughter’s body home to Venezuela – without knowing what had happened.

Aurimar entered the United States in September 2022 and has been in constant contact with her mother since then.

The two even spoke to each other just hours before Aurimar’s death, but NBC News reports that Arelis was not immediately notified of her daughter’s death – even though the Dallas County coroner’s office had her phone number on file.

Instead, she learned of her daughter’s murder by Aurimar’s younger sister, Auribel Acero Villegas, who was just 17 and had spoken to a neighbor in Venezuela who knew Alexis Moreno – another neighbor with whom Aurimar had lived.

A day later, Auribel said she spoke briefly with someone she believed worked at the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The person on the other end asked for permission to use Moreno as the family’s primary contact, which she agreed to.

“That’s as far as the conversation went,” Auribel said.

However, there was no mention of such a call in Aurimar’s file.

Instead, in an entry dated Oct. 31 — two days after Aurimar’s death — a county official reported a face-to-face meeting with Moreno and a conversation with Arelis on Moreno’s cellphone.

It was alleged that Arelis gave Moreno the authority to act as Aurimar’s legal next of kin – which Arelis told Noticias Telemundo never happened.

She insisted she only wanted Moreno’s help in coordinating her daughter’s return to Venezuela.

Then, without requiring a signature from Arelis, a county employee updated Aurimar’s file to list Moreno as her official next of kin in the county’s system – a move that gave him authority over what could be done with her body while potentially hers mother excluded.

The county clerk put Arelis’ number in the file, but there is no indication that anyone in the office attempted to contact her for the next two years, as the grieving mother, her family and friends launched a fundraiser, to assist in the repatriation of Aurimar’s remains home.

Any attempts to find out details about Aurimar’s death and claim her body were complicated by the fact that, although Arelis could make and receive calls via WhatsApp, she could not afford to call landlines in the United States.

But two and a half weeks after her death, Moreno wrote to the University of North Texas Health Science Center and offered to donate her body to the program on her mother’s behalf – although Arelis insisted she never agreed to it.

Tyler Johnson, the center’s assistant director of the body donation program, responded the next day in Spanish: “First I need to confirm that you and the mother understand body donation.”

Then, when Moreno confirmed he wanted to proceed, Johnson sent a donor consent form and gave him eight hours to return it.

Moreno never returned the paperwork, and soon after, Aurimar’s family stopped responding to her messages.

Then, six weeks after Aurimar’s death, the coroner’s office completed its work on the case, and since no one had made the necessary arrangements for Aurimar’s body, it was “now considered abandoned,” according to a letter dated December 15. 2022.

According to NBC News, which reports that Arelis never received such notification, it said her remains “will be processed in accordance with our standard procedures.”

A day later, Aurimar’s body was delivered to the University of North Texas Health Science Center without her family’s knowledge.

In early 2023, Arelis began to worry that something was wrong.

She had gotten Johnson’s email address from Moreno’s sister-in-law, although she didn’t know what role he played but knew he might have information about her daughter’s body. So she wrote to him on February 10: “I have not heard anything about the body of my daughter Aurimar del Carmen Iturriago Villegas.”

“Please, I need to know. God bless you very much.’

Johnson, the assistant director of the center’s body donation program, responded quickly, copying his supervisor Claudia Yellot, relaying to Arelis his previous exchange with Moreno and adding that her former neighbor never followed up to complete the donation.

He suggested she contact the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office, but failed to mention that the Health Science Center already had her daughter’s body parts and would soon be preparing them for one of its clients.

Biotech company Relievant Medsystems paid the center $35,672 to run a four-day course and needed 18 torsos to train its Intracept back pain procedure – which Boston Scientific later paid $150 million to acquire.

Jessica Sachariason, a spokeswoman for Boston Scientific, told NBC Relievant that officials were unaware that the center had provided the company with dozens of unclaimed bodies over the years.

She said the company has since updated its policies to require consent from the dead or their next of kin for all human samples used in training.

“Our deepest condolences go out to the mother and family of Aurimal Iturriago Villegas,” said Sachariason. “No family member should have to experience something so tragic.”

A full month and a half after the training, on July 5, 2023, the Health Science Center sent part of Aurimar’s body to a crematorium near Dallas, and in September – just weeks after her 22nd birthday – her ashes were disposed of, according to the contract of the medical school with the county delivered to the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Then, on January 23, 2024, Aurimar’s legs were used to train students who wanted to train to become physician assistants.

That same month, Arelis received a call on WhatsApp from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office saying prosecutors had agreed to send Webb, the shooter, to prison for 23 years.

Arelis thanked the officers for the information and asked about her daughter’s body.

The district attorney’s office then told her that prosecutors had tracked down information and discovered that Aurimar had been deemed “unclaimed” by the county and had been cremated. A prosecutor also tried to connect Arelis with local officials who could answer further questions about the location of Aurimar’s remains.

When she finally learned that her daughter’s body had been dismembered and cremated at the Health Science Center, an official sent her a map of a cemetery that marked where her daughter’s ashes were buried.

“Even though it hurts my soul, I think I’m going to throw in the towel and leave things in God’s hands,” Arelis told Telemundo.

But her family is worried about her, noting that she is refusing to eat, her blood pressure has skyrocketed, and she suddenly appears much older as she prays every night to bring her daughter home.

The Health Science Center has since apologized.

“We became aware of the issues within our Willed Body program and identified that there were deficiencies in its management and monitoring. “The program did not meet the standards of respect, care and professionalism we require,” they wrote in part.

“The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth sincerely apologizes to the families affected.”

“We are committed to operating all programs with transparency, integrity and the highest ethical standards, and we are committed to maintaining trust in our institution.”

“We hope that these measures can ensure that our educational studies are conducted with all our might to show dignity, grace and respect.”