Front Page  »  

Paso Robles father charged with murdering son, falsifying identification records

May 22, 2025

David Reyes Diaz

By KAREN VELIE

For nine hours a boy who recently turned 6-years-old waited for his father, locked in a car with the windows rolled up while outside temperatures reached 99 degrees. The child is dead, his mother now knows where her missing son is, and the father is facing a litany of charges including murder.

Interviews with family members of 6-year-old David Reyes Diaz, school officials, his father’s supervisor and law enforcement paint a disturbing picture of a young child who fell through the cracks during a time of political divide over immigration.

David’s father, 27-year-old Briant Reyes Estrada, was born in Donato Guerra, Mexico, according to a federal criminal complaint. When he was 21, he impregnated a 16-year-old girl. In Mexico, it is not a crime to have consensual sex with a minor over 15 years of age.

David was born on April 2, 2019.

On Feb. 23, 2022, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer encountered Reyes Estrada near Naco, Arizona – a small community on the United States-Mexico border. Under COVID emergency protocols, the officer returned the undocumented Reyes Estrada back to Mexico after adding his fingerprints and photographs to a CBP data base.

A year later, Reyes Estrada was back in the United States, this time with his son.

There are two versions of how David ended up in the United States with his father. In one scenario, Reyes Estrada took his son and left Mexico, while David’s distraught mother searched for the child.

Reyes Estrada’s cousin tells a very different story. The cousin, who shared a home in Paso Robles with Reyes Estrada and his son, said David’s mother was using drugs and “did not want to be part of David’s life.” CalCoastNews agreed not to publish the cousin’s name.

Briant Reyes Estrada

“So, his father and David emigrated to this country to have a better future together,” the family member said through a language translation app. “Unfortunately, it could not be achieved since the father had to be a father and mother at the same time, work, and take care of the child at the same time.”

On April 6, 2023, Reyes Estrada, who was living in San Simeon with David at the time, applied to the Bluebird Inn for a housekeeper position using fraudulent documents, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Reyes Estrada provided his prospective employer with a permanent resident card, also known as a green card.

The green card showed Reyes Estrada had been a resident of the United States since Feb. 26, 2019. However, the version of the green card Reyes Estrada provided had been discontinued in 2017, according to the criminal complaint.

In addition, the number on the social security card bearing Reyes Estrada’s name belonged to another person. The Bluebird Inn hired Reyes Estrada on April 10, 2023.

On July 27, 2023, Reyes Estrada applied for a maintenance engineer position at the Fireside Inn on Moonstone Beach in Cambria, again allegedly using fraudulent documents. On the application, Reyes Estrada falsely claimed to have a legal right to work in the United States, according to the criminal complaint.

On several occasions, the father left David in his vehicle while he went to work, leading to at least two reports to San Luis Obispo County Child Welfare Services, said Matt Griffith, a supervisor at the Fireside Inn.

In late Sept. 2024, management at the inn suspended Reyes Estrada regarding issues not related to leaving his son in a vehicle while he worked. Reyes Estrada, however, refused to leave and management called sheriff deputies who escorted him off the property.

Fireside Inn management terminated Reyes Estrada on Oct. 3, 2024 for violating company policies.

On several occasions, Reyes Estrada was discovered filming or harassing female employees at the Fireside Inn.

“Reyes Estrada locked a female employee in an engineering room and turning off the lights, then laughed while the female employee was trying to leave the room,” according to the criminal complaint.

On Oct. 30. 2024, Reyes Estrada allegedly used a Fireside Inn credit card at a hardware store in Cambria, where he spent $1,000.

In a surprising twist, on Nov. 4, Reyes Estrada filed a small claims lawsuit against the Fireside Inn claiming he was unfairly fired and had not received his last check. He was seeking $1,500.

Reyes Estrada then secured a job at the Paso Robles Inn and moved to north county city with his son, who attended Pat Butler Elementary School. During the short time they lived in Paso Robles, the boy frequently missed school.

On at least five occasions, school officials reported their concerns to SLO County Child Welfare services, according to a Paso Robles Joint Unified School District official.

On April 29, deputies arrested and booked Reyes Estrada in the SLO County Jail on charges of false impersonation, falsifying a driver’s license, and embezzlement related to the Fireside Inn credit card purchases. ICE then issued a detainer to deport Reyes Estrada.

However, deputies released Reyes Estrada in compliance with California’s sanctuary state law.

On May 10, Reyes Estrada allegedly locked David in his vehicle, with the windows up and the car turned off, while he worked a nine hour shift at the Paso Robles Inn without checking on his son, according to the criminal complaint. Paso Robles experienced a record breaking 99 degree high temperature that afternoon.

Reyes Estrada drove his son from the Paso Robles Inn parking lot to Twin Cities Community Hospital in Templeton, where the child was pronounced dead.

Three days later, the SLO County District Attorney’s Office filed two felony counts against Reyes Estrada – murder and child abuse on May 13.

Homeland Security Investigations determined Estrada Reyes “had no visas or applications approved or pending that would render him employable in the United States,” according to the criminal complaint. He also had ” had no visas, applications, and/or petitions that would lawfully allow him to be present in the United States.”

On May 21, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint charging Reyes Estrada with committing fraud and misuse of visas, permits and other documents regarding his use of falsified records to secure employment in the United States. He faces up to 10 years in prison on these federal charges.

Employers in California cannot legally question a prospective employee’s green card, or any other immigration-related document, before offering employment or during the initial hiring process even if they suspect the documents are forgeries.

Because we believe the public needs the facts, the truth, CalCoastNews has not put up a paywall because it limits readership. However, we are seeking qualification as a paper of record, which will allow us to publish public notices, but it requires 5,000 paid subscribers.

Your subscription will help us to continue investigating and reporting the news.

Support CalCoastNews, subscribe today, click here.

 


Loading...
Subjects:         
Related:


7 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Allow me to make a shocking prediction:


Nothing will change


The father will go to prison , DSS and immigration will I’ll get criticized but ultimately no actions will be taken to prevent this from happening again. The democrats who run our state only stay in power by allowing all immigrants to come to CA without restriction. All of this is a long term play to get more votes. Every child of an immigrant will take on the parents voting behavior. Can you imagine kids telling their undocumented parents that they should build a wall, a wall that would have prevented their future as anchor babies? It never happens


This is why CA like other blue states is slowly deteriorating. Let everyone come here, give them free stuff, and they will vote for you forever because they are single-issue voters. Immigrants will never admonish you for making CA garbage b‘cause they were not here to remember when things were better


22

This is easy math:

1 If CA didn’t require sanctuary status for Reyes, the SO would have sent him to ICE

2 If he was detained by ICE, the son would be in foster care or detained with him.

1+2=3

3 David would be alive today if Newsom’s CA had allowed federal authorities to detain Reyes. Thus Newsom’s CA played a major part in killing David Reyes.


19

Sanctuary State…..thanks Newsom for aiding in this child’s death.


60

“In late Sept. 2024, management at the inn suspended Reyes Estrada regarding issues not related to leaving his son in a vehicle while he worked.”


There’s a lot to deal with there. He was a bad employee, but NOT because he was leaving his son in a vehicle while he worked?!? WTF? We are a people who have lost our moral bearings. This poor little boy is dead because so many American adults didn’t see anything wrong. The immigration debacle of the previous administration is a humanitarian catastrophe like none we’ve ever witnessed in the U.S. before. We’re in the last days of the Roman Empire, which breaks my heart. We’ll never know now what this child might have accomplished in his life, because he’s dead. This child had no control over what happened to him. This is so unutterably sad…


40

The other side of the coin would also have us explore how other, legal, residents face a similar childcare dilemma. Low income earners cannot afford the $1000 cost of daycare. The term latch key kids is a nice euphemism for describing low income kids who must be left alone while the parent works. This isn’t new.


Yes, we can make this about an illegal immigrant and bringing the full weight of the law to bear upon his actions. It is an easy analysis and makes one feel good about our response as a society. It also leaves us absolved in any culpability.


If we say we value children then we should not have a problem with funding childcare for those who need it. Even immigrant children. This outcome would have been different if that was the case.


-29

First and foremost, a kid who had no agency in any of this is dead. That’s a human tragedy, and I regret that. Also, I am very much opposed to illegal immigration. I refuse to be deceived by the previous administration they didn’t open the floodgates deliberately, no matter how much spin, gas-lighting, and passive voice their flacks try to use now to portray the influx on 10-20 million people (we’ll never know the real number) into the country as something that just happened. As if the wind blew the door open and millions of people ran into the living room… When you speak of culpability, I get your meaning in the macro sense but individuals make decisions. Ultimately this father failed in his primary duty, which is to guard your kid’s life with your own. Economic difficulties are not an excuse. Lots of people, both citizens and non-citizens, face the same dilemma but do not repeatedly leave their kids locked in the car. Beyond the issue of heat, which took the boy’s life, what if someone had simply smashed the window and taken him?


I was a “low income earner” when my wife and I learned that she did not, in fact, have the flu, and that her morning nausea meant The Kid was on the way. Initially we did make use of some social services, such as WIC and Food Stamps. This was back in the day when one got the physical coupon book to use in the store, meaning two transactions and people grumbling not-so-quietly as they waited in line. We lived in a single-wide out in the country and my child took the first baths in the kitchen sink.

I just worked my ass off, got a better job, joined the Guard, and managed by the grace of God and hard work to be able to have Mom leave her job and stay home. Granted it’s harder now decades later, but I think you err in making the father too passive a figure here. He could have done things differently. My opinion, take it for what it’s worth. Peace.


8

So your solution is…. Free childcare for undocumented immigrants? How about childcare for US citizens too, or is this socialism stuff where you are heading anyways? Considering CA is in an epic budget crisis, how do intend to pay thousands per month for every child? Or is it just very poor children (immigrants only, everyone else pay for them and yourselves)? What if some communities can’t or don’t have a daycare? Where is this legion of daycare workers sipped to come from?


Sorry but if you want to solve every problem by throwing more money at it you will not solve it. More funding for ineffective programs is not novel idea and has already become a problem in CA.


16