GoFundMe Cristian Pavon Pineda
The mother of a Texas boy, believed to have died in his sleep of hypothermia after his home lost power due to an unprecedented winter storm, is struggling to understand how the happy, healthy son she kissed goodnight on Monday is now gone.
On Tuesday morning, just hours after playing in the snow for the first time in his young life, Cristian Pavon Pineda, 11, was found unresponsive under a pile of blankets.
“When he saw the snow, he was happy,” his mother, Maria Elisa Pineda, who moved to Texas from Honduras over two years ago, recalls to PEOPLE in Spanish.
“He slammed a door and the snow fell on his head and he was laughing so much. We were taking all these photos of him in the snow,” she adds of her son.
After playing outside, Pineda says her son went to bed around 10