The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Isabella Nicole “Bella” Gonzales’s death a suicide after she died of a gunshot wound to the head in a Fort Worth apartment on May 20, 2022, CBS News Texas reported. Her parents dispute the ruling and are asking authorities to reassess the case, which they believe involved intimate-partner violence.
What is established—and what is disputed
The ruling remains the medical examiner’s conclusion; Fort Worth police have not officially determined that Gonzales was killed. Police have also not treated the man who lived with her as a suspect, according to CBS News Texas.
Her parents have described signs they believe point to abuse. Billie Gonzales told KXII that her daughter had changed, lost significant weight and hidden a new relationship from the family; she also said bruising was visible on Bella’s arm in the family’s last photograph together. CBS News Texas reported that the mother described journal entries in which Bella wrote of being afraid at home, trying to leave the man she lived with and experiencing physical abuse. The station also reported messages on Bella’s phone in which she said she would take her own life. Those accounts do not resolve the cause or manner of her death.
The family has hired an attorney, a forensic expert and a private investigator to review the case, and says that review identified investigative steps that had not been completed, CBS News Texas reported. The department’s homicide unit has said investigators consider all possibilities, including homicide, the station reported.
A proposed law and a separate county review process
Billie Gonzales is advocating for a proposed measure called Bella’s Law. As described by KXII, it would presume deaths related to intimate-partner violence suspicious until proven otherwise and strengthen investigation protocols. The proposal is the family’s response to its concerns; it is not a finding about what happened to Bella.
Tarrant County also has an annual intimate-partner-violence fatality review, but it examines cases to identify potential system changes rather than determine Gonzales’s case. The Archway says the team has reviewed local IPV-related homicides and published findings each October since 2019. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the team reviewed 20 cases from 2024 and found 11 met its criteria: homicides resulting from a pattern of coercive control. That count describes the team’s criteria, not a conclusion about Gonzales.
Statewide figures provide another measure, with different scope: the Fort Worth Report, citing the Texas Council on Family Violence, counted 161 intimate-partner-violence deaths in Texas in 2024, compared with 205 in 2023. Neither those statewide totals nor the county review’s findings establish what happened in Gonzales’s death.
