After an NBC News investigation revealed the names of hundreds of unclaimed bodies in the Dallas area that were sent to a local university for scientific research, a Venezuelan mother’s grief deepened: She says her grief continues because of the chance missed burying her daughter properly.

NBC News published an investigative story this week about Arelis Coromoto Villegas and her desperate, years-long attempts to return her murdered daughter’s body to her homeland of Venezuela following her daughter’s death in October 2022.

Her daughter, 21-year-old Aurimar Iturriago Villegas, died in a violent road rage incident this fall when a man fired a gun into the rear window of a car in which she was sitting, hitting her in the head.

Aurimar, a U.S. migrant, had arrived in Texas only about a month earlier after briefly living in Colombia. It later emerged that she was one of hundreds of people who Texas officials reported were unclaimed after their deaths: This triggered a process in which their bodies were sent to the University of North Texas Health Science Center where they were then cut up by students or sold to private companies who use the bodies to develop products or train their own private medical staff. NBC News discovered the practice as part of a comprehensive investigation into unclaimed bodies earlier this year.

NBC released the names of hundreds of deceased people whose bodies were sent to the science center. Aurimar’s body had been sold to private companies, which her family only discovered when they read NBC’s story. This came more than two years after they began their intensive efforts to ensure that Aurimar’s body – which they believed was still intact in the US – was sent back to Venezuela for burial.

“It’s a very painful thing,” Arelis, the mother, told NBC News during an interview from her home in Venezuela. “She is not a small animal to be slaughtered or dismembered.”

According to Telemundo, which collaborated with NBC on the larger report, Aurimar’s family had raised thousands of dollars they believed they needed to send her body to Venezuela for a proper burial.

But Arelis told NBC News that she and her family no longer received communications from Dallas County officials and were shocked to see her loved one’s name in the NBC News report.

“Every night I say, ‘My God, why did you take my daughter?'” Arelis told the outlet. “I do not accept the death of my daughter. Not yet.”

Aurimar always fought “for a better future” for her family, her brother Yohandry Martinez Villegas told NBC News, who documented how the Venezuelan left school at 16 to work odd jobs to earn money for her family . After moving to Colombia and working a delivery job, Aurimar told her family that she and six other migrants planned to make the dangerous journey to the United States.

After a journey lasting several months, Aurimar reached Texas in September 2022, according to NBC News, and surrendered to border authorities, who then released her into the United States, where she stayed with friends in the Dallas area. A month later she was killed.

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NBC News discovered that Aurimar’s torso was one of 18 unidentified bodies sold to a private biotechnology company, Relievant Medsystems, that trained medical personnel in back surgeries. An inquest found that her legs were cut up by students at the Health Science Center of North Texas, and the ashes of her other remains were turned over to the Callas County coroner, NBC has learned.

The outlet said Arelis was “outraged” after finding out what happened to her daughter’s body. However, she feels the chance of retrieving her daughter’s remains is slim as she says communication with local officials remains broken and irregular.

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