Lucio Catarino Diaz, Houston janitor sentenced to six years jail or peeing in female worker water bottles, infecting them with STDs. Avoids having to register as sexual offender.
Lucio Catarino Diaz, Houston janitor sentenced to 6 years for peeing in female worker water bottles, infecting them w/ STDs. Avoids having to register as sexual offender.
A Texas man working as a janitor at a Houston medical office has been sentenced to six years jail after inflecting multiple female co-workers with sexually transmitted diseases after peeing in their drinking water.
Lucio Catarino Diaz, 53, pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a deal with prosecutors, who dismissed the additional seven counts of aggravated assault he was charged with as well as a single count of indecent assault, according to court records.
The deadly weapon, prosecutors say, was Diaz’s own bodily fluids, KPRC reported.
Diaz’s actions were first discovered by a co-worker at the medical office where he was employed in September 2022, according to a criminal complaint cited by KHOU. A month later the worker Diaz was identified as the culprit contaminating the water and arrested.
The employee told authorities that her concerns began when she discovered ‘the water she got from the water dispenser had a funny taste and smell to it,’ according to the complaint.
Not wanting to drink the ‘sour’ water from that communal dispenser, she told police that she began bringing in her own water bottles each day.
But there was a catch.
Some days according to the worker, she didn’t finish all her water and left the bottle on her desk, the un-assuming woman told investigators. However, the un-named worker soon ‘noticed her water from her personal water bottle that she brought from the store smelled nasty,’ according to the complaint.
It was so ‘horrible’ that she decided to just throw away the bottle rather than investigate the source, she told cops.
Three weeks after first noticing something off with the water in the communal dispenser, the employee discovered the source of the off-putting taste and smell when a co-worker offered to make her coffee.
The employee made sure to tell her coworker not to use water from the dispenser, since it was sour and smelled bad, handing her bottle to the coworker, according to the complaint.
The coworker asked why the water inside was yellow. At that point, the employee took a whiff of the bottle and ‘smelled the odor of pee.’
At this point, the two women spoke to the doctor at the facility, who agreed to do a urinalysis test. The complaint says that the test came back positive.
The employee told police she then bought a large bottle of water, putting it in clear view of a small hidden camera she set up on her desk to see if she could discover who might be urinating in her water.
She had just arrived home when she got an alert, at which time she turned on her feed from the camera whereupon she ‘observed the janitor, a person she knows as Lucio, open her water bottle, which was placed on her desk, unzip his pants, remove his penis from his pants, and place the head of his penis (bare) into her water bottle, causing the entire mouth of the water bottle to touch his penis,’ according to the complaint.
The video then showed Diaz putting the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the desk.
This happened again the following night, according to the complaint.
Diaz admitted to his actions when pressed by police, according to the complaint, noting he ‘did it because he knew [the employee] would drink it the next day.’
But there was more.
During further questioning, Diaz claimed having a ‘malicious intent’ and that it was a ‘sickness,’ according to court documents.
The targeted employee had a panel of STD tests performed a few days later, which came back positive for Herpes simplex virus type 1, something she had never previously tested positive for, according to the complaint. Testing on Diaz revealed he was positive for the same virus, as well as chlamydia.
Soon other women who drank from a communal water cooler or personal bottles contaminated by Diaz soon tested positive for the incurable STDs, which can cause health problems ranging from blisters to liver failure.
The District Attorney’s office classified Diaz’s urine as a ‘deadly weapon’ because Herpes simplex virus type 1 can ‘weaken the immune system’ and cause ‘bodily injury that creates a substantial risk of death.’
Multiple women discovered they had contracted STDs following the worker’s confession. Diaz still faces a number of civil suits, court records show.
Diaz was credited by the judge for two years of time served.
Not immediately clear is why he targeted the co-workers, the majority of whom were women. Of note, Diaz as part of his plea deal, will not have to register as a sex offender.
