Caroline Peña, a 32-year-old Texas resident, was fatally stabbed by Amaya Cookie Diaz, 19, Kitty Mia Diaz, 21, and their friend, Kyandra Renne Faz, 21, on Thursday, June 25, in their shared neighborhood of Del Rio.
She was a mother of five, with her youngest child being three.
Peña refused to go down without a fight in her final moments, according to her longtime friend, Zelina Ochoa, who learned about her fate through a now-deleted Facebook post.
“She had just collapsed, and she stood right back up,” Ochoa detailed. “She was a fighter.”
The victim of the “smiling sisters” was remembered as “a fighter” by her longtime friend
Image credits: Facebook/Caro Peña
Ochoa spoke with The New York Post on Monday, June 29, saying that before Kitty and Cookie went viral for smiling during their arrest, a photo circulating on Facebook showed them in the midst of harming Peña, whom she endearingly called Caro.
Peña had her back turned towards the camera in the photo, with her shirt appearing to be “filled with blood,” Ochoa said.
The sisters and their friend were in front of her.
Image credits: Facebook/Caro Peña
Ochoa labeled the picture as “powerful” because it revealed that “these three girls showed up with their weapons, and Caro showed up with nothing but her hands.”
“She didn’t show up thinking that ‘today is my last day.’”
Image credits: City of Del Rio Police Department
Peña was attacked at a “very busy intersection” in their town, according to Ochoa, so there were a lot of witnesses, some of whom commented under the post before it was taken down.
According to the comments, “there was no verbal altercation” between Peña and her attackers before the violence erupted.
Instead, “it went from 0 to 100 very quickly.”
“It confused a lot of people because it happened so quickly, and everybody was like, ‘Wait, hold on, what did we just witness?’” Ochoa said.
Police said the victim and the three accused knew each other, indicating the attack was not random
Image credits: YouTube/Good Citizen
Del Rio Police Chief Frank Ramirez told TMZ on Monday that the Diaz sisters, as well as Faz, were acquainted with Peña, though he did not elaborate on the nature of their relationship.
According to previous reports, Faz told police that Peña had “arrived at her residence looking to start a fight” at around 2 pm.
Image credits: KENS 5
Surveillance footage later obtained by investigators showed Peña’s black Dodge pickup truck driving up to Faz’s house, where Cookie and Kitty arrived shortly after.
The video shows Cookie getting out of the passenger seat of a black Chrysler 300 and confronting Peña while holding an object believed by the cops to be the homicide weapon.
Image credits: Aguatazik
Image credits: Facebook/Christina Salinas
Ochoa denounced Faz’s claims, as she described Peña as someone who never got involved with drama.
“Caro was not the type to go to the clubs or be involved in any type of altercations or anything like that,” she said.
“She was that one friend who tried to bring peace among everyone, so it’s just confusing why this happened.”
Image credits: KENS 5
Ramirez, notably, stressed that Peña’s decision to go to Faz’s house doesn’t make her responsible for the violence she was subjected to.
The young Texas sisters charged with fatally hacking a mother-of-five to death flashed sickening smiles as police hauled them off in handcuffs, video shows. pic.twitter.com/3pNFaoPfBq
— KLEIN (@future_circuit) June 29, 2026
He also commented on the fact that Cookie and Kitty smiled during their arrest, saying, “My impression is it didn’t look good, and you would think there would be a little more remorse in a situation like that—it looked callous.”
The attackers remain behind bars after each was slapped with a $5 million bond during their first court appearance on Friday.
Peña’s friend expressed sympathy for her children, as a GoFundMe campaign was launched in their support
Image credits: Facebook/Caro Peña
The fundraiser states that two out of Peña’s five children have autism.
It has secured $5.4K out of its $9K target as of this writing, but Ochoa says no amount of financial support will erase the loss suffered by the family Peña left behind.
Image credits: Facebook/Caro Peña
“She was one of those people who were born to be a mom… she made it look so easy,” Ochoa said.
“Everyone says your kids love you, but her kids really love her. She wasn’t just a mom—she was their friend… her life was her children.”
Additionally, referring to Kitty Diaz, a mother of a 4-year-old, Ochoa said she could not understand “why a mother would do this to another mother.”
“She is still gonna see her son grow up through the glass, but Caro’s kids are only gonna have a tombstone,” Ochoa lamented.
The attackers were labeled “monsters” by several netizens
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