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Friday, July 30, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
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Jailers jailed
Published May 20, 2007
Two former jailers recently became guests of the facility where they once worked, after one of them was arrested for burglarizing the home of a friend and the other allegedly tried to smuggle a bottle of cheap wine and love letters to an inmate.
Cristela Ramirez, 20, no address available, was arrested following an indictment on a charge of burglary of a habitation, and Bertha Alicia Martinez, 25, Lot 10 Cerezo St., was arrested on a felony charge of prohibited substances and items in an adult or juvenile correctional or detention facility, investigators with the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office said.
Ramirez was arrested and indicted as the result of an investigation by the Del Rio Police Department, said the VVSO’s Lt. Larry Pope.
DRPD Sgt. John Kirtley said the case against Ramirez stemmed from a November 2006 burglary of an apartment in a complex in the 100 block of Rockwell Way near Del Rio High School.
Kirtley said Ramirez is alleged to have taken a camera and other items from another apartment in the same complex.
Pope said Ramirez was indicted on the burglary charge by the grand jury in January 2007 and had been employed as a jailer by The GEO Group for two months as a detention officer.
Pope said Martinez was arrested following an investigation by the sheriff’s office.
Working on information, VVSO Sgt. James “Mac” McGonagill, Pope and Mark Scott, assistant warden for The GEO Group, established surveillance outside the jail about 11:30 p.m. Mary 12.
McGonagill, inside a vehicle in the jail parking lot, saw Martinez drive into the parking lot, get out of her vehicle and carry something to the perimeter of the fence around a section of the jail known as Area 6.
“He also observed her bend down and appear to shove something under the fence,” Pope said.
McGonagill followed Martinez after she got back into her vehicle and left the jail parking lot and called Pope and Scott to report what he had seen.
Pope said he and Scott checked the fence and found a 750 milliliter bottle of MD 20/20 with two love letters taped to it and addressed to an inmate in the jail.
McGonagill stopped Martinez’s vehicle on Gregory Drive, arrested her and brought her back to Pope’s office for an interview.
“She stated that she met the inmate while he was incarcerated in the county jail and she was employed there as a guard,” Pope said. “She said she had previously smuggled a photo of herself to the inmate and that she had spoken to him on the telephone and that he had asked her to put the bottle of wine under the fence.”
Pope said Martinez resigned from her job at the jail last November after she was discovered passing a personal note to the inmate.
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