Erin Benavides, the Texas prosecutor and former wife of ex-NBA player Brent Barry, died by suicide last month at age 54.
Benavides was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound inside her husband’s Port Aransas, Texas, home in October, according to a police report obtained by The Post. She had resigned from her position as an assistant district attorney just two months earlier, in August.
Her death has prompted renewed attention to a life largely spent outside the public eye — one marked by child advocacy, a late-in-life legal career, and a single burst of tabloid notoriety that she repeatedly sought to move past. For those who worked alongside her, the scandal that briefly made her famous was never the point.
“Although she had something erupt in her life that seemed bigger and took a lot of attention away from what she did, she still regained her focus and went back to helping children,” said Yolanda Valenzuela, a nonprofit executive who worked with Benavides on the Bexar County Child Welfare Board when the controversy broke.
Valenzuela, now executive director of Kym’s Angels Foundation, recalled that Benavides stepped down from the welfare board not because she was forced out, but because she needed to attend to her personal life. “We didn’t make her resign, by no means. She made that choice because she had other things to focus on in her life,” Valenzuela said, pointing to Benavides’ divorce from Barry and the demands of raising their two sons, Quin and Cade, now 26 and 20.
That departure in 2010 hardly ended Benavides’ work with vulnerable children. Born to a single teenage mother in California and adopted into another family at an early age, she had spent years channeling her own experience into advocacy. She represented Bexar County’s Blue Ribbon Task Force at the Texas House in 2005, and in 2007 received the US Congressional Award for Angels in Adoption.
During her 13-year marriage to Barry — the Hempstead, Long Island native who played for the San Antonio Spurs and other NBA teams — the couple also launched the Spurs Foundation to aid children in protective services. From 2020 to 2022, Benavides served as president and CEO of the Youth Center of Texas, a nonprofit providing crisis intervention and long-term case management to child sex-trafficking victims.
Valenzuela remembered Benavides working tirelessly on mass-adoption ceremonies and Christmas fundraisers for local foster children, and laying groundwork for a special nursery in Bexar County — a safe haven where parents could bring children during emergencies. “Her heart, because of her particular circumstances, I think that’s what laid the groundwork for the impact she had in regards to all this,” Valenzuela said.
The same year she left the welfare board, Benavides enrolled at St. Mary’s University School of Law, graduating with her J.D. In 2013. She spent two years as an assistant criminal district attorney in Bexar County, followed by three years as a staff attorney in the county’s juvenile probation department, according to her LinkedIn profile. She later joined Texas’ 38th Judicial District, serving Uvalde and Real counties in its anti-gang and border prosecution unit.
“During her time in my office, Erin diligently worked through the outstanding number of pending smuggling cases,” wrote 38th Judicial District Attorney Christina Mitchell in an Oct. 30 Facebook tribute. “In addition to her earnestness and hard work, Erin brought much joy, laughter, and mirth to the office.”
Mitchell noted that Benavides “would often give words of support and encouragement to staff…and, sometimes, even to defendants,” and that she “loved her boys and always shared, with such pride, their accomplishments.”
Benavides also quietly rebuilt her personal life, marrying San Antonio lawyer Pablo “Paul” Benavides in June 2022, according to the Uvalde Leader-News. Paul Benavides, whose practice areas include oil and gas and real estate at Martin & Drought PC, was listed as owner of the home where his wife was found dead. He did not return messages seeking comment.
The 2010 allegations by “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria that Benavides — then known as Erin Barry — had engaged in an “emotional affair” with Longoria’s then-husband, NBA Hall of Famer Tony Parker, thrust Benavides into unwanted national prominence. Longoria’s claims came amid her own divorce from Parker, and the story dominated tabloid coverage for weeks.
Benavides issued exactly one public statement on the matter, forcefully rejecting the accusations. “I DID NOT HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH TONY PARKER, nor did I ‘pursue’ Tony Parker,” she wrote.
She framed the distraction as an unwelcome intrusion on work that actually mattered to her. “I am so busy with my children and law school studies that to take even a few moments out of my day to address this ludicrous issue is an annoyance,” her statement read.
“I have spent my adult life fighting for children who have been victimized so forgive me for not caring when someone tells me that my name is being dragged through the mud.”
“Salacious rumors are not what keep me awake at night. What keeps me awake is wondering how the 5-year-old who was taken away from her abusive family is sleeping during her first night in a children’s shelter,” she wrote, noting that her sons and her first year of law school also demanded her attention.
“Being a first year law student is much scarier than dealing with gossip!”
After that single statement, Benavides largely vanished from national headlines, though Valenzuela noted she remained well known in San Antonio for her community work. “She was already very much in the limelight in San Antonio because of what she does. She was really known for great stuff,” Valenzuela said.