Man sentenced for attempted strangling

A North Dakota man was sentenced to prison Tuesday for attempting to strangle a woman he was dating on a cruise ship off the coast of Galveston.

Hector Blanco, 45, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown to serve three years in prison followed by two years of supervised release for his assault conviction. Blanco, a resident of Watford City, N.D., pleaded guilty to the crime last year, admitting to attempting to strangle and suffocate a woman while aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in 2018.

“No excuse can justify Hector Blanco’s violent actions that turned a dream vacation into a dreadful nightmare for his victim,” said Perrye K. Turner, a special agent for the FBI. “I am extremely proud of FBI special agents in the Texas City Resident Agency and our victim specialists who provided compassionate support to the brave survivor who reported this crime.”

The attack occurred on Nov. 18, 2018, in a cabin aboard the Liberty of Seas cruise ship. Blanco tripped, and the woman was able to run out of the cabin and report the incident to security personnel on the cruise ship.

At the time of the assault, the cruise ship was roughly 4 miles from Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico but still within U.S. maritime jurisdiction. The FBI investigated. Blanco remains free on bail and will voluntarily surrender to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility “in the near future,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.