Nurse is fugitive in jail crime scheme
Indictments detail contraband charges
A former Bexar County Jail nurse was romantically involved with the inmate she now is accused of helping smuggle contraband into the lockup, officials confirmed Tuesday.
Maricela Leija, the former nurse, became a fugitive after a grand jury on Monday indicted her and Thomas Zeke Lucero, an ex-detention officer, on charges of organized crime involving a smuggling scheme in 2018 that at one point provided the inmate, Gabriel Moreno, with a cellphone.
Moreno beat a murder rap later that year but is now in prison for possessing a prohibited weapon while in custody. The latest indictment charges him with possessing a cellphone while in the jail along with participating in criminal activity with Leija and Lucero.
A warrant has been issued for Leija’s arrest, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told reporters in a Zoom videoconference Monday evening, after the indictments were announced by the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office.
“We are actively looking for this young lady,” he said, asking anyone who knows Leija’s whereabouts to call the Sheriff ’s Office at 210-335-6000.
“She knows she is wanted. She would do better to turn herself in,” Salazar said.
Lucero was arrested Monday morning.
Leija and Moreno started their relationship when Moreno was out on bond awaiting a court appearance, said Deputy Johnny Garcia, the Bexar County Sheriff ’s Office public information officer, in an email.
When Moreno was in jail, the two communicated but they did not have physical contact with each other, Garcia said.
“We do not have specific information regarding the current status of their relationship, but at some point they were known to have been involved in a romantic relationship,” Garcia said.
Salazar said the 2018 jail smuggling operation was discovered during an an investigation of Lucero. He said the detention officer admitted being part of a scheme to bring drugs and other prohibited items, such as the cellphone, into the jail.
The indictments allege that Leija, as a jail nurse, and Lucero collaborated with Moreno “in carrying on criminal activity” by providing contraband in a correctional facility, according to a statement from the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office.
The DA’S Office declined to comment on the pending cases.
If convicted of engaging in organized crime with an underlying offense of having a prohibited item in a correctional facility, each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.
Moreno was described in court testimony as being a member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang and as someone who inspired fear in others. He was accused with his cousin, Daniel Moreno Lopez, of killing Jose Luis Menchaca, 35, on Sept. 30, 2014.
Testimony established that Lopez and Moreno beat Menchaca with baseball bats before the victim was suffocated and dismembered in retaliation for a botched drug deal, his body parts burned on a barbeque grill in an attempt to dispose of evidence.
Lopez was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in November 2018. Moreno’s first trial ended with a hung jury. He was acquitted of the charges in his retrial in December 2018.
In June 2019, six months after his acquittal, Moreno was arrested on allegations that he assaulted a woman at gunpoint. The woman might have been Leija, who obtained a protective order against Moreno that month, but withdrew it a few weeks later, as the assault charge against Moreno was dropped, according to online court records.
The protective order refers to an act of domestic violence but contains no details.
During one of the proceedings, Moreno was found to be in possession of a shank, an improvised weapon, Salazar said. Moreno now is at a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison, serving a 20year sentence for a 2020 conviction of possession of a deadly weapon inside a penal institution, according to court records.
Salazar said Moreno is in the process of being returned to Bexar County to face this latest indictment.