Jacinto Mireles was killed while riding his paleta cart on Beckley Avenue Sunday. Photo courtesy of Kiabeth Mireles
An Oak Cliff paletero died after a driver hit his vendor tricycle Sunday night, and his family spent a night searching for him in Dallas hospitals.
Jacinto Mireles, 53, died after he was hit in the 1500 block of South Beckley Avenue at about 6:20 p.m. Sunday, and his family was never notified.
When he didn’t return home, his family thought maybe he was delayed by a flat tire, but by 10:30 p.m., they called police, who said they couldn’t help. And then they started searching hospitals, Al Día reports.
It wasn’t until around 5 p.m. Monday that they found out he had died, after multiple calls to the Dallas County Medical Examiner Office.
Jacinto Mireles was an undocumented immigrant. His 28-year-old daughter, Kiabeth Mireles, told the Spanish-language publication that she and her family haven’t been allowed to see her father’s body, and no one has been arrested in his death.
“Por qué no nos dejan verlo?” Kiabeth Mireles told Al Día. “Por qué nunca nos dijeron que mi papá estaba muerto?”
Why won’t they let us see him? Why didn’t anyone tell us that my father was killed?
Mireles worked in construction Monday through Friday and made his rounds through the streets of Oak Cliff on weekends, Al Día reports.
A crowd-funding campaign for his final expenses has raised more than $13,700.
WFAA reports that Mireles was killed by a 21-year-old, driving a 2009 Dodge Ram northbound in the right-hand lane, who told police that he didn’t see Mireles “until it was too late.”
