Ex-HPD officer indicted in incident linked to voter fraud fears
A Harris County grand jury on Tuesday indicted former Houston police Capt. Mark Aguirre on an assault charge after he was accused of running a man off the road and pointing a gun to his head because he thought he was committing voter fraud in the runup to the 2020 election.
Aguirre will face a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The trial currently is scheduled to begin in February.
Prosecutors allege Aguirre slammed into the back of an air conditioning repairman’s truck about 5:30 a.m. Oct. 19 of last year. He pulled a gun, forced the repairman to the ground and put a knee on his back. He ordered another person to search the truck. A police officer happened upon the scene shortly after.
Aguirre, who was fired by the Houston Police Department in 2003, would later tell investigators he was conducting a “citizens investigation” into an alleged ballot harvesting scheme he thought was orchestrated by local Democrats. He told police they would find hundreds of thousands of ballots in the repairman’s truck.
They found only air conditioning parts and tools. Aguirre said he had been following the repairman for four days.
Aguirre, a licensed private investigator at the time, was hired to investigate fraud claims and paid about $266,400 by the Liberty Center for God and Country around the time of the incident. That group is led by Steven Hotze, the local conservative activist, and Jared Woodfill, the former Harris County Republican Party chairman.
The former captain was fired by Houston police for his handling of a 2003 street-racing raid that saw 278 people arrested. All of their charges — mostly trespassing, unrelated to the racing — were dropped, and 32 officers were disciplined.
Aguirre was arrested last December on the felony assault charge.
Terry Yates, Aguirre's attorney, said he was surprised it took a year to get the indictment and he looks forward to proving Aguirre's innocence at trial.