The Alexandra Flores case involves the 2001 abduction and murder of a five-year-old girl from an El Paso, Texas Walmart parking lot, a crime for which David Leonard Renteria was convicted of capital murder and executed by the State of Texas on November 16, 2023.
The Abduction and Discovery in November 2001
On November 18, 2001, Alexandra Flores disappeared from a Walmart parking lot while on a shopping trip with her family. Local law enforcement and community volunteers searched the surrounding area through the evening and into the following morning.
Her body was found the next day in a remote stretch of desert roughly sixteen miles from the Walmart. The condition of the remains indicated she had been dead for several hours before being located. The case shifted from a missing-child search to a homicide investigation, and specialists processed the remote site for physical evidence.
How Investigators Identified David Leonard Renteria
Detectives turned to the security system at the property where Alexandra had vanished. The footage captured a male walking with the child and gave officers a description and a timeline to work from. Witnesses near the scene reported a white van, and additional interviews with people in the area helped establish movements around the parking lot. Those leads, combined with forensic work from the recovery site, pointed investigators to David Leonard Renteria, and he was arrested.
Capital Murder Conviction
Texas charged Renteria with capital murder. Under the Texas Penal Code as it stood at the time of the offense, a homicide qualified as capital murder when the victim was under six years old.1Texas Legislature. Texas Penal Code § 19.03 – Bill Analysis
After the jury found him guilty, the trial moved into the sentencing phase that Texas capital cases require. Jurors had to decide whether there was a probability that the defendant would commit future acts of violence posing a continuing threat to society, and whether anything in his background, character, or the circumstances of the offense warranted a life sentence instead of death.2Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Texas Capital Sentencing Special Issues The jury returned a death sentence.
Final Appeals and the 2023 Execution
Renteria’s execution was set for November 16, 2023. In the weeks before that date, his defense pursued several legal challenges, raising claims about his intellectual capacity and about Texas lethal injection protocols. The United States Supreme Court declined to intervene, clearing the way for the state to proceed.3Supreme Court of the United States. David Santiago Renteria v. Texas – Case Docket
The execution went forward that evening after the final stays were resolved, carried out under the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s standard scheduling and witness protocols, which allow members of the media and the victim’s family to observe.4Texas Department of Criminal Justice. TDCJ Execution Procedures5Texas Department of Criminal Justice. TDCJ Execution Witness Rules Renteria was pronounced dead shortly afterward, closing more than two decades of trial, appeals, and post-conviction review in the case.