Mother of Fort Worth high school student addresses her son's killer in court

While we can hold onto memories, they are small solace for a mother who can no longer hold her son.

“He loved church, he loved fishing, he loved music,” Erica Silva said.

Erica Silva is sharing what it was like to enter a Tarrant County courtroom on Friday and speak directly to one of the teens responsible for killing her son Zechariah Trevino.

“These were kids on kids, and it’s a sad situation,” Silva said.

Silva traveled from her home in Oklahoma for the sentencing hearing for Isaiah Nunez.  Nunez, 18, entered a guilty plea for his role in Trevino’s death and received a 35-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors say Nunez was one of three suspects involved in the shooting outside a fast-food restaurant where Trevino worked as a cook. 

“I told him in court, ‘look at me, look at me when I’m talking to you Isaiah’,” Silva said. “He lifted his head, and I told him, ‘I can only hope the best for you. You messed up your whole life by one mistake that you made. You not only took my son’s life but you took your own’.”

The shooting in Jan. 2023, just a block from the school Trevino attended, led to an immediate outpouring of grief from the R.L. Paschal High School community in Fort Worth ISD.

Silva says as the days, weeks, and months go on, her son’s legacy continues, too.

She now works with other families who’ve lost children to violence, turning the grief she still works to process into help for someone else.

“Don’t be afraid to say ‘this is how I’m feeling, it’s not normal today’,” Silva said. “Grief is the final act of love, and it can take you to some really dark places.  And no one deserves that.”

She adds there is some healing in being able to address her son’s killer, and she will continue sharing her son’s story so everyone sees Zechariah.

“That way everybody knows he has a face, he wasn’t just a number,” Silva said.