September 27, 2009
Pharr woman dies in head-on collision
ALTO BONITO — A Pharr woman died in a head-on collision here on Expressway 83 early Saturday morning.
Julia Reyes, 53, and her husband were traveling east about 6:18 a.m. when a Chevrolet pickup traveling on the wrong side of the road collided with them, said Johnny Hernandez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. Reyes’ husband was taken to McAllen Medical Center and treated for multiple injuries. He was listed in stable condition late Saturday.
The driver of the Chevrolet pickup was taken to Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen and treated for abdominal pains. The vehicle’s three passengers sustained only minor cuts.
Police are waiting for the results of a blood test to determine if the truck’s driver, Reynosa resident Miguel Aleman, was intoxicated.
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Nick Pipitone covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446.
September 26, 2009
Divorce & Separation In Texas
Texas Legal Separation:
There is no legal separation in Texas. After filing for a divorce, the judge may be ask the for orders dealing with the use of property and temporary child custody and support. Texas is a community property state. Seperate and living apart does not make property you acquire after ceasing to live together as separate property.
Venue/The County to File for Divorce:
One of the parties to the marriage must have residented in for six months and been a resident of the county where the petition is filed for 90 days before the petition is filed. Your paperwork will be filed with the district clerk or county clerk of county in where you or the other party resides.
Grounds for Divorce: Fault v. No Fault:
Texas divorces can be both fault or no fault. The basis for wanting the divorce are detailed in a document called a Petition for Divorce. This Petition is filed with the District or County Court. Once the Final Divorce is granted you are no longer married. Divorce in Texas can be based on: A) cruelty; B) adultery; C) conviction of a felony; D) abandonment (for at least 1 year); 5E living apart (without cohabitation for 3 years); and/or E) confinement in a mental hospital (for at least 3 years). The divorce are also be based on discord and conflict of personalities that destroys the legitmate ends of marriage. This is the no fault divorce.
Mediation in Texas For Divorce Cases:
Many couples getting divorced in Texas choose to workout the specific terms of their divorce degree themselves. In Texas the courts refer cases to mediation. The mediation agreemen is usually legally binding.
Texas Annulment:
Annulment occurs when a court declares a marriage to be legally invalid. Rather than ending a marriage going through the divorce process. An annulment is a declaration that the marriage was never valid. Annulments can be granted if one party was underage, if the person asking for the annulment was under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, if one party concealed a divorce (within the last 30 days), if the marriage took place less than 72 hours after the license was issued, or due to permanent impotency; fraud, duress, or force; mental incapacity, consanguinity (too closely related); or bigamy. To seek an annulment a petition for annulment must be filed in the County where one of the parties resides. See the section above regarding venue.
Alton police chief charged with public lewdness
MISSION — Alton Police Chief Baldemar Flores turned himself in to authorities Monday morning after learning he was wanted for public lewdness.
The arrest came after Mission police received “several complaints” from store personnel of a suspicious vehicle parked behind Auto Zone and the H-E-B near the intersection of Conway Avenue and Griffin Parkway, police said.
Store employees told police that the same man and woman were having sex inside vehicles while parked “in plain view,” according to a Mission police statement.
On Friday, Mission police received a call that the suspicious vehicles were parked behind one of the stores. Police said they saw two vehicles leaving the area, with one of the drivers later identified as Flores.
Police stopped the woman driving the second vehicle, as well. Criminal charges against her are pending, police said.
Employees told police the same two people had been going to the same location, sometimes twice a week, since last year, police said.
Flores, 34, learned of his arrest warrant and turned himself in to Mission police at 9 a.m. Monday, authorities said.
Mission Municipal Judge Jonathan Wehrmeister charged Flores with one count of public lewdness and gave him a $5,000 personal recognizance bond.
Flores was booked at the Hidalgo County Jail late Monday morning and released shortly after noon, jail officials said.
Public lewdness is a class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of one year in a county jail and up to a $4,000 fine.
Flores, who is rumored to planning challenge Mission Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas in the mayoral election next year, could not be reached for comment late Monday afternoon.
Alton City Manager Jorge Arcaute said Flores has taken a leave of absence while the city conducts its own investigation into the allegations against the police chief. Assistant Police Chief Enrique Sotelo will serve in the interim, Arcaute said.
“We still need to do our own administrative inquiry before we rush to judgment,” Arcaute said.
Flores replaced former Alton police chief Jose Luis Vela, who was accused of fondling several officers in August 2007. Vela was fired from the department one month later.
In November 2008, a jury cleared Vela of sexual assault and theft charges. A judge dropped the rest of the former chief’s charges after he was acquitted.
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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.
Classes for divorcing parents help end animosity
Mark Sims and Nicole Collier watched their son become nervous during eight years of custody battles. Isaac, now 10, seemed fearful and took to biting his nails.
Then the two separated parents took a six-week class geared toward separated or divorced parents, and everything changed. In the court-ordered class, they learned how to put their anger aside and focus on what was best for their child.
Both have seen the difference in their son.
“Since we have resolved our issues, he has really relaxed and is much better for it,” said Collier, 37, a stay-at-home mother in Los Angeles with four other children.
The class, aimed at teaching parents to continue parenting together after their marriage or relationship has ended, is part of a changing approach to helping families through a divorce or separation. Such parenting programs are now required in 27 states. In other states, judges can order parents to attend, or there are districtwide or citywide mandates regarding such programs, according to a 2008 survey of mandatory parent education.
“Divorce is so common today, people forget it’s still emotionally complicated or emotionally devastating,” said Robert Emery, director of the Center for Children, Families and the Law at the University of Virginia. To counteract this, Emery said divorce-related parenting classes take a “child-focused, parent-friendly approach” to helping parents work out a parenting plan.
The classes reflect how dramatically family law and policy has changed in the past decades. Gone are the days when divorce proceedings focused on the division of the couple’s financial assets.
“Children’s issues were not as prevalent in the 1960s and the early 1970s,” said Peter Salem, who is executive director of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts in Madison, Wis. “There was a pretty straightforward way of doing things. Mom got the kids, dad visited every other weekend, and that was that.”
Now, there’s a strong focus on the emotional health of both parents and children.
“One of the biggest things that happened to us in the class, and it’s the simplest thing, is to have courtesy when you talk to the other person – to say stuff like ‘thank you,’” said Sims, a 48-year-old Los Angeles musician. “It seems like a really simple thing, but it changes your attitude about what you’re doing.”
The parenting classes vary greatly. There are lecture programs, small groups, and a growing number of Internet-based classes that can be used to fulfill court orders for parent education.
The goal of most is to help parents understand the emotions that go along with divorce, and separate their parental relationship – which will continue – from the adult relationship that is ending, said Salem.
There are other common themes. Among them: Children shouldn’t take on adult roles when the adults are struggling.
“They shouldn’t be necessarily setting up the cable service, the phone service in the new apartment. That’s not their job,” said Salem. “There are certain household responsibilities, but children still need to be children.”
Another: The child needs both parents in his or her life if possible.
Joan Haynes, a naturopathic physician who took a court-ordered class when she divorced last year, went in thinking it would be a waste of time. But she was surprised by what she heard there.
“They said divorce, per se, didn’t hurt children,” said Haynes, of Boise, Idaho, who now shares custody of her 10-year-old daughter with her ex-husband. “What hurts children is the ugliness around the divorce, or even if the parents are still married, it’s the fighting and putting the child in between.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics Report, the divorce rate reached a high in 1970 and is slowly declining. Some demographers estimate divorce hit a high of 50 percent in 1970, and is now around 43 percent. However, in the same period the number of people having children together without marriage has risen, and their custody battles can end up in court as well.
Research has shown that some parenting programs can prevent future problems, such as more litigation, said Susan L. Pollet, who with Melissa Lombreglia published a paper on parent education programs in the journal Family Court Review. In a survey, the two found that 46 states have parent education programs related to divorce, some mandated, some not.
“All my clients who have gone, they always come back and say, ‘I’m so happy I went to that; I learned a lot,’” said Lynnette Berg Robe, who practices matrimonial law in Studio City, Calif.
Mandatory classes get a bad rap, Robe said, but they get people in the door and listening to the material.
“It’s not that anybody is trying to get them not to get divorced,” she said. “It’s just that if you behave in a certain way, you’ll end up with an unhappy child who will grow up to be an unhappy adult.”
After eight years of battling, Sims noted that he and Collier aren’t friends – just parents. They prefer to communicate through texting. They go to school conferences together, and recently met up for Isaac’s dentist appointment.
“It’s not like this great thing,” he said. “I would rather not talk to her, to be honest. I’m sure she’d rather not talk to me, but we have to do it for our son’s sake. And this class helped us to be cordial to each other.”
Alton armed robbery suspects arrested after standoff
ALTON — Officers’ final suspect in an armed robbery fell into their lap Thursday evening.
Alton police responded about 5:15 p.m. Thursday to a report that four men had robbed a Pocket cell phone store near the intersection of Five Mile Line and Bryan roads.
The store clerk told police one of the four criminals covered his face with a blue T-shirt, demanded mobile phones and cash, and displayed a gun during the robbery, said Enrique Sotelo, Alton’s interim police chief.
An Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy spotted the black Chrysler 300 that the suspects took off in after the incident.
Officers arrested the vehicle’s two teenage occupants, who eventually told police the other duo was hiding out in the attic of a house on Kantulil Street, near the intersection of 5 1/2 Mile Line and Bryan Road, police said.
Police tried to coax the pair from the tiny attic but were unable to reach them at right away, Sotelo said. The suspects were hiding in a space only about 2 feet tall.
“We tried negotiations for a couple of hours,” Sotelo said. “We couldn’t get anybody out.”
Officers called in a canine unit from Palmview to try to scare the suspects from the attic, but the dog could barely fit inside and almost broke through the ceiling.
Finally, Sotelo crawled into the attic himself, he said, and pulled out one of the teens hiding beneath the fiberglass insulation.
Minutes later, the other crashed through the ceiling and onto the floor, where officers were waiting for him.
The four teens — ages 16-18 — will face aggravated robbery charges in connection with Thursday evening’s events, which wrapped up about 9:15 p.m., police said.
Officers recovered about 20 mobile phones and some cash believed to have been stolen from the store, Sotelo said. No injuries were reported in connection with the robbery or standoff.
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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.
McAllen police officer charged with DWI
McALLEN — Police arrested one of their own Sunday night, charging an off-duty officer with drunk driving after he crashed into a parked car.
Alex Alvarez apparently argued with a manager at Chili’s Grill & Bar on Nolana, refused to wait for a taxi that had been called and then backed into the same manager’s truck just after 10 p.m. Sunday, according to police records.
The 39-year-old Alvarez was arraigned in McAllen Municipal Court Monday and released on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond. He has been suspended without pay, until the criminal charges are resolved, said McAllen police Chief Victor Rodriguez.
“In our business, these kinds of matters have the potential to have very, very serious consequences,” Rodriguez said. “The outcome of last night may determine his future.”
Aside from the criminal charges he is facing, Alvarez could endure a range of punishments, from suspension to termination. He could also be stripped by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards of Education, TCLEOSE, of his license to be a police officer if he is found guilty, Rodriguez said.
If he is convicted of the drunk driving offense, a class B misdemeanor, he faces up to a $2,000 fine and up to 180 days in jail.
A 14-year veteran of the force, Alvarez repeatedly asked officers to let him drive home when they arrived Sunday night. Officers found Alvarez behind the wheel of his Ford truck, a red security club still clamped on the steering wheel, according to police records.
Witnesses and Chili’s employees told police that Alvarez had been bothering four female customers and had to be escorted from the table. A manager at the restaurant said that Alvarez was “too intoxicated” to drive home, so he called a taxi, according to the records.
When the manager tried to stall Alvarez until the taxi arrived, Alvarez apparently stripped a pair of glasses from the manager’s head and threw them to the floor.
A security camera in the parking lot then captured Alvarez get into his truck and back into the other vehicle, according to police records. Police suspect that he forgot to remove the security club from the steering wheel before backing up, according to the records.
Alvarez refused to take a Breathalyzer test, and he refused other sobriety tests once at the police station. When officers arrived at the scene, Alvarez said he couldn’t remember “doing anything to the manager” and he repeatedly asked officers to let him drive home.
But after officers recounted what witnesses described, Alvarez apologized to officers for putting them in the precarious situation of arresting a fellow policeman, according to the records.
“(Alvarez said) that we should do what we had to do and that it was all his fault,” according to the report. “(Alvarez said) that he did not want us to get in trouble for his actions.”
Officers who responded to the scene notified their superiors, who also responded to the scene, according to the records. It’s police procedure for supervisors to be involved when a department employee is part of an investigation, Rodriguez said.
“I believe they responded adequately,” Rodriguez said.
Alvarez was a well-trained officer, often receiving far more instruction that what TCLEOSE requires, said Tim Braaten, executive director of the commission. For officers who are convicted of a DUI, the commission normally suspends the police license for 10 years, he added.
“(Alvarez) has been a … good officer for us,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve been lucky to have his services; however, you have what happened last night.”
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Sean Gaffney covers business, the economy and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434.
Sheriff’s deputies net dozens of DWI arrests in July Fourth operation
EDINBURG — The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office participated in the statewide “Drink. Drive. Go to Jail.” campaign along with the national Impaired Driving Mobilization campaign during the Fourth of July weekend.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested a total of 53 intoxicated drivers, according to an agency statement.
Palmview teacher, church volunteer, charged after having sex with student
MISSION — Officers have arrested a former Palmview High School teacher and church volunteer who may have impregnated a 17-year-old student during encounters inside his pickup truck, police said.
Osiel Armando Muñoz turned in his resignation to school officials Tuesday afternoon after the student told a counselor that day she may be pregnant after having consensual, unprotected sex with him.
Mission police officers arrested the 26-year-old Muñoz at his home Thursday morning. He stood in Mission Municipal Court later that day to face one felony count of improper relationship between an educator and a student.
Muñoz and the student told police they had sex at least two times in his green 2001 GMC Sierra pickup truck in Mission, court documents in the case state.
The student told investigators she had confided in Muñoz about problems she had with an ex-boyfriend.
The teacher and student began exchanging text messages, which eventually led to the sexual relationship, court documents state.
The girl told police Muñoz picked her up at her Mission home without her parents’ knowledge at least two times to have sex. One encounter occurred in a neighborhood near the intersection of Two Mile Line and Mayberry Street, while the other took place along Los Ebanos Road.
Raul Gonzalez, police chief for La Joya schools, said the counselor notified his agency of the student’s claims about the affair. The school district’s police department turned the case over to Mission police after learning the sex acts actually took place inside Muñoz’s truck and off school property.
“What’s coming to him is his due process,” Gonzalez said of Muñoz.
Mission police spokesman Sgt. Jody Tittle said it remained unclear whether the girl was one of Muñoz’s students during the sexual affair.
The teacher also served as a youth volunteer at Journey Church, 1801 N. Conway Ave., Mission.
Vidal N. Muniz, lead pastor at Journey Church, said the student had participated in activities at the church with Muñoz “maybe once or twice.”
“This is a total surprise for us,” Muniz said.
Muniz said Muñoz would not continue to serve as a youth volunteer, but the church would offer him support.
“That’s exactly why we exist — for situations like this,” the pastor said. “We have a dysfunctional community and that’s why we exist.”
Mission Municipal Judge Jonathan Wehrmeister arraigned Muñoz on one count of improper relationship between an educator and a student. The second-degree felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a possible fine of up to $10,000 upon conviction.
As he stood in court handcuffed and shoeless, Muñoz said the improper relationship was his first run-in with the law. He said nothing when reporters asked questions as he was escorted from the court.
Wehrmeister set Muñoz’s bond at $200,000 for the charge. He was set to be transported to the Hidalgo County Jail late Thursday afternoon.
The case marks the third this year involving a La Joya school employee and a student.
In April, La Joya school district police arrested Javier Salazar, a teacher at Americo Paredes Elementary School in rural Palmview. He was charged with one count of indecency with a child after a 7-year-old girl alleged he fondled her during class. He has yet to be indicted, however.
And in February, police arrested former Clinton Elementary School computer lab proctor Armando Gutierrez on 10 counts of indecency with a child. An Hidalgo County jury acquitted him of the charges in August.
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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.
Gang member faces possible death sentence for college grad’s murder
EDINBURG — Nearly four years after his daughter’s murder, Sergio Cavazos finally allowed himself to breathe easy knowing her killer would not go free.
He choked back tears minutes after an Hidalgo County jury convicted 26-year-old gang member Mario Quintanilla in the woman’s 2005 slaying.
“I believe in God. I believe in justice,” Cavazos said. “And I believe that Larissa is looking down on us right now.”
Jurors took more than seven hours Thursday to find Quintanilla guilty of capital murder, setting off a second phase of the trial in which they will decide today whether or not to sentence him to death.
Their decision comes after an eight-day trial in which two of Quintanilla’s fellow members of the Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos gang described a detailed jailhouse confession of how he killed 23-year-old Larissa Cavazos.
Prosecutors allege Quintanilla and several other men broke into the woman’s Edinburg apartment during the early morning hours of Dec. 21, 2005, believing it to be a cocaine stash house. When they were unable to find any drugs, they beat her, shot her and left her to die.
An aspiring speech pathologist, the woman had graduated from the University of Texas-Pan American only days before her death and had a job interview in Brownsville scheduled for that morning.
While she had no known association to drugs, investigators believe another gang member had taken Quintanilla to her apartment days before the botched home invasion to purchase cocaine from a drug dealer attending a party there.
It took Edinburg police more than a year to link the slaying back to Quintanilla and his accomplices, but not before they investigated Larissa Cavazos’ boyfriend for the death.
Eventually, officers traced a cell phone taken from her apartment to a home Quintanilla and his accomplices frequented in McAllen. And once they started looking into his background, they uncovered a network of potential gang witnesses.
Two gang members told jurors this week that after Quintanilla had been charged with the murder, he described the woman’s death in vivid detail while confined in the Hidalgo County Jail. Their testimony corroborated much of the evidence police found at the crime scene, said Cregg Thompson, an Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney.
“In order to catch bigger criminals, sometimes you have to go through little criminals,” he said.
But Quintanilla’s defense team questioned the trustworthiness of those gang members. Both men were serving sentences of their own for unrelated crimes and stood to gain by helping police solve the murder case, attorney Sergio Valdez said.
“From the moment (the state) got up there and made their opening statements, they were selling fear,” he said. “The evidence they presented doesn’t support these lying convicts.”
Prosecutors had hoped that testimony from Quintanilla’s accomplice — 33-year-old Alfredo “Fro” Gutierrez Valdez — would clinch a guilty verdict. In February, Valdez abruptly ended his trial for Cavazos’ murder by agreeing to plead guilty and accept a life sentence in exchange for a promise he would testify against his fellow gang member.
But when he was called to the stand last week, he refused to answer questions about his or Quintanilla’s involvement. It remains unclear what action the state could take against him for breaking his plea agreement.
Quintanilla now faces either a life sentence or the death penalty — the only two options available for a capital murder conviction. Jurors are expected to reconvene this morning to hear testimony in the punishment phase of his trial.
But as Sergio Cavazos left the courtroom late Thursday night, the bereaved father looked forward to the chance to finally address his daughter’s killer.
“That man has to pay for what he did to our family,” he said. “And he will pay.”
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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.