On Wednesday, August 18, 2016, Abundio Vasquez, 52, of Denison was found guilty by a jury in the 397th District Court of Invasive Visual Recording and was sentenced by that same jury to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The prison sentence and fine were the maximum sentences allowed under the law. Judge Brian Gary presided over the trial.
On September 8, 2015 at around 1:00 PM Yesenia Jimenez, 24 years old and 8 months pregnant at the time, and her mother Irma Jimenez were shopping in Kroger on Loy Lake Road in Sherman. Irma Jimenez testified during the trial that she noticed a man staring at her daughter. A few moments later Irma looked around and saw the man bending forward with his arm extended and cell phone in hand. According to Irma’s testimony the man was taking pictures underneath Yesenia’s skirt. Irma immediately confronted the man, who then fled the store.
The Sherman Police Department was contacted and Officers Mark Wood and Cody Woods would investigate the case. Officer Wood testified he was able to identify the Abundio Vasquez through store employees, who knew Vasquez from previous incidents and had seen him walking around the store that day. One of those store employees, Rachel Reinsch, testified that she saw Vasquez walking around the store for 30 to 40 minutes prior to the incident and he did not appear to be shopping. Reinsch described the Vasquez’ behavior that day as “creepy”. Assistant District Attorney Donnie Carter also played for the jury a copy of video footage of the encounter taken by the store security system.
Officer Cody Woods obtained a search warrant for Vasquez’ home and vehicle. Woods testified that the phone used by Vasquez was not found, but described for the jury his belief that Vasquez, realizing that police would be investigating, disposed of the phone used in Kroger prior to the search warrant being executed. Officer Woods testified that the day after the incident Vasquez told detectives that he had lost his phone. Officer Woods further testified that during the execution of the search warrant a brand new phone was found, further supporting his theory that Vasquez had disposed of the phone used in Kroger.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty in less than 30 minutes.
Prosecutors also presented to the jury witnesses from five other instances where Vasquez had been caught either taking photographs or looking up the skirts of women in multiple counties in North Texas. A female health care worker also testified that in 2009, when she had been visiting patients in the home next door to Vasquez, he had repeatedly exposed himself to her and made lewd gestures through a window in his home. The jury returned the maximum ten year and ten thousand dollar fine sentence in less than 20 minutes.
“There are some wierdos out there, for sure,” said Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown. “This man’s behavior was escalating, and he needed to be removed. This offense – Invasive Visual Recording – is usually punishable by only up to two years in state jail. If a person has been previously convicted, the range of punishment goes up to 10 years in prison. He had been sentenced to 20 months in state jail for previous offenses in 2013, so his punishment range was raised to 10 years. I would guess the jury would have sentenced him to an even longer sentence if the law would have allowed it.
Vazquez was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Donnie Carter. Plano attorney F.B. Larrea represented Vasquez.