RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — The Tequesta jewelry designer shot to death on Singer Island last weekend leaves a living legacy in Texas.

Nearly one week after she was shot and killed, one of 32-year-old Maria Tritico’s kidneys was donated to a woman in Houston.

“She’s a prosecutor. I’m a defense lawyer,” Chris Tritico said of the recipient of his daughter’s organs. “We’ve worked cases against each other for years, but she’s a lovely person.”

Tritico, a Houston attorney, said he wasn’t aware of his daughter’s decision to sign up as an organ donor until after she was murdered.

“If I had to lose my daughter and I know that what she wanted to do was if she had to go, she wanted to save lives,” Chris Tritico said.
‘She is the greatest hero I’ll ever know.’

Read Maria’s obituary here.

Maria was shot while on the beach on Singer Island.

“Maria’s fiancé called frantically and said that Maria had been shot and we just screamed,” Chris Tritico, the father of Maria Tritico, told WPTV.

Tritico said he was celebrating his wife’s 60th birthday in Houston, where he lives. It was Sunday. It was also when he said he got the call their daughter had been shot.

He said they quickly booked flights to Florida.

“I was hoping and praying that I wasn’t going to find what I did. It couldn’t have been any worse,” he said.

According to Riviera Beach police investigators, Maria was shot last Sunday afternoon next to the beach. Multiple shots were fired. Tritico said his daughter was the victim of the shooting.