A deadly attack in northwest Dallas, a broken promise and a buried dream

This story is part of The Dallas Morning News Murder Project aimed to share the stories of all the people murdered in Dallas in 2024.

Efraín Xicol Quej migrated to Dallas in the last days of 2023 in search of a dream: to work and earn money to buy land and build a small house at home where he, his wife and their son could live.

His wife, Filomena Mucú Pacay, knew this was the only way out of the tunnel of poverty in which they had been born and raised. In the indigenous village of Tontzul Uculá in the Alta Verapaz department, Guatemala, Q’eqchi’ is the main language, and there are great mountains, rivers and beautiful forests. Despite the beauty, poverty is so widespread that sometimes there is not enough food to eat and children die because there is no money to buy medicine.

“Promise me that you won’t be gone for long, that you will come back as soon as we have enough money for the house,” Mucú asked Xicol before leaving for the American border.

“I swear I won’t be here for the next three years,” Xicol told her, trying to comfort his wife’s tears. “I’ll come back to be here with you.”

Three months later, Xicol returned to his village in a coffin. The 25-year-old was beaten to death by members of his own family in Dallas on March 16.

An unpayable debt

Xicol knew that he would eventually have to follow the path that most of the men in his village had taken: migrate north to provide for his family.

When his son, Byron Adrián, was born in 2021, he postponed his trip as long as possible to watch him grow up. But when the boy turned three, he realized that he should consider traveling because he would soon be going to school.

“We went to the bank to ask for a loan of $50,000 quetzales ($6,500) so we could pay the coyote (the smuggler) who would help him cross the border,” Mucú said. The Dallas Morning News in a telephone interview from Guatemala. ‘Now that he’s dead, I can’t pay that money back. I was left with such a debt that it takes my breath away.”

Mucú asked in parks and public squares for money to repatriate Xicol’s body.

Because of the interest, Mucú believes her debt is now more than $70,000 quetzales ($9,000).

The only way Mucú can buy food for her and her son is by hand washing other people’s clothes for money.

Case dismissed

On Saturday, March 16, Xicol came from his warehouse job to his apartment in the 2700 block of Northaven Road, where he saw his brother being attacked by two men in the parking lot. Mucú told it The news the attackers were family members.

Xicol didn’t think twice about it and jumped in, Mucú said. He was beaten and left unconscious on the ground. A witness called 911 and Dallas Fire-Rescue took him to Parkland Hospital, where he died.

The next day, Dallas police arrested brothers Reginaldo Seb Tzub and Antonio Seb Tzub, Xicol’s uncle, on murder charges. The charge was later dropped to manslaughter. On June 13, a Dallas County grand jury ruled there was insufficient evidence and declined to indict them.

Three days before he died, Xicol sent a photo of himself posing in his apartment. An American-Guatemalan flag hangs on the wall behind him. A similar flag, popular among Guatemalans living in the United States, was placed atop the coffin in which he was sent home.

While she seeks justice for her husband, Mucú tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams. She doesn’t know how, but she hasn’t lost hope that one day she will have a house where she can live with her son.

“It’s my turn to realize the dream we swore, but together we could no longer achieve,” she said.