15-year-old dies after stabbing near Fort Worth school; father critically hurt
A 15-year-old Polytechnic High School student died Friday from stab wounds and his father was critically injured in a case that Fort Worth police are investigating as a homicide, authorities said.
Jacob De La Rosa died shortly after 4 p.m. in the emergency room at John Peter Smith Hospital, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office website.
Fort Worth police said in a news release that officers were called about 3:45 p.m. Friday to the 2700 block of East Rosedale Street, which is near Polytechnic High School, to investigate the stabbing. When officers arrived, everyone involved had left the scene.
Officers later located a juvenile suspect who admitted to cutting two other people during a fight. The juvenile, whose name has not been released, told police it was self-defense.
Police learned that Jacob De La Rosa had died at the hospital and that a second person who was stabbed was hospitalized in critical condition.
Jacob’s mother, Janet, told Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV that the second victim of the stabbing is her husband, Albert De La Rosa. She said that the father had arrived early to pick up Jacob and his older brother, and he pulled up near Poly High School.
Janet said trouble had been brewing with other students who had threatened her son, and when her husband arrived to pick up the boys that day, a fight broke out.
She said Albert was badly injured, but he drove to the hospital after their older son put Jacob in the car. “On the way here, they even crashed, but they kept going because his son was bleeding out,” Janet told WFAA outside the hospital on Saturday.
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Janet said her husband was stabbed in his spleen and woke up Saturday after hours in surgery.
Detectives are continuing to investigate the case and will provide information to the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office for review to determine any possible charges, police said.
A police spokesperson said the fight did not happen on the school’s campus, but started in a parking lot near a gas station and then moved down the road towards Rosedale Street.
Fort Worth ISD officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
GoFundMe for 15-year-old’s family
The De La Rosa family has established a GoFundMe to help cover Jacob’s funeral expenses.
“What happened to Jacob should not have happened to anyone,” the GoFundMe states. “The pain of losing him in this way — sudden, cruel, and preventable — is something no family should endure.”
Jacob is described in the fundraiser as “a quiet, kind-hearted soul.” He had just celebrated his 15th birthday.
“Despite growing up in difficult circumstances, Jacob never gave up on dreaming of a brighter future,” Jesus Alanis wrote in the GoFundMe. “One where he could give back, make his family proud, and rise above the violence that too often surrounded him.”
Three other homicides in Fort Worth
Two other people were killed in separate incidents in Fort Worth on Friday, according to police.
The victims included an 18-year-old woman who was shot outside a southeast Fort Worth restaurant, and a college student from India who was fatally shot while working at an Eastchase Parkway gas station during a reported robbery.
In a shooting early Sunday morning, a man was killed and five people were wounded inside a nightclub on Bledsoe Street in the West 7th Street entertainment district.
This story was originally published October 4, 2025 at 12:49 PM.
