Former Hidalgo County District Clerk faces federal charges

Former Hidalgo County District Clerk Omar Lopez Guerrero, 49, is back in the news after being on the run from law enforcement for 13 years, holed up somewhere south of the border.

Occasionally, someone would come back from Monterrey and say they had spotted him there, but that was as close as anyone got until last week when the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office announced his capture, which took place on the Yucatan Peninsula (Tulum).

Guerrero had a warrant out for his arrest tied to allegations that he had sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl dating back to 2013.

Plus, he is facing federal charges — unlawful flight to avoid prosecution — not to mention additional state charges tied to cocaine possession and tampering with an assault rifle.

When you hear the song, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” it’s Guerrero’s story that checks all the boxes.

Omar MIA

“This young man has a lot of charm,” people were saying when he won the Democrat Primary in 2005, before being sworn into office January 2006.

But less than a year after being sworn into office, Guerrero was out of office and in big trouble with the law.

In 2007, after his acquittal on a charge of statutory rape, he pleaded guilty to a 2006 DWI bust still left hanging, and then in 2011, he was charged with making threatening phone calls to a man he accused of having an affair with his wife.

Those charges were dismissed the following year. Then unlucky 2013 rolled around. The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department, under the direction of former Sheriff Lupé Treviño, came knocking on Omar’s door, with a search warrant in hand related to a new charge of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old minor.

That’s when deputies allegedly stumbled on approximately four grams of coke and a weapons cache, which included a rifle with a missing serial number, oops, leading some people to wonder: does this guy have connections with one of the Mexican drug cartels, or what?

Guerrero bonded out (approximately $1 million), which proved to be a mistake because when deputies returned to his home the following day to arrest the former district clerk on the still-outstanding sexual assault charges related to a minor, he had already packed his bags and headed south. The former district clerk’s father, sister, and a female friend who had a parttime gig as a Palmview reserve cop were later charged with helping Guerrero flee to Mexico. They were each bonded out at $250,000.

Some people said this sounded like a Mexican novella, but others said, no, this is just South Texas showing its flair.

At the time, May 2013, according to a statement that former Sheriff Lupe Treviño gave to The Monitor, the Guerrero family had driven Omar to the Los Indios Bridge south of Harlingen, where they crossed, and then headed back to Reynosa.

As if the Omar Guerrero story wasn’t already strange enough, that flight to escape justice brought the feds into the picture. Guerrero now had an outstanding federal warrant attached to his wanted poster as well as a state warrant.

Several days after Guerrero’s escape from justice, former Sheriff Treviño called a news conference, during which he suggested that Guerrero had ties to at least one of the Mexican drug cartels and that they had threatened his (Treviño’s) life.

Subsequent to that, after their own arrest, the Guerrero family sued the sheriff and JP Homer Jasso in federal court, saying that the $1.05-million bond had been excessive, and that the sheriff had raided their home without an arrest warrant.

Jasso said the million-dollar bond had merit, given the fact that the former district clerk had skipped bail in 2006, and the sheriff said the Guerrero family arrest was done within the scope of the law and with the help of the U.S. Marshals.

This was before the sheriff ran into his own problems with the feds, but that story has already been told, and he’s now out of federal prison, so we’ll let that one lie.

Which all goes to show, when it comes to some wild tales, the Rio Grande Valley has few equals.

In the end, after 13 long years, former Hidalgo County District Clerk Omar Guerrero is back now on this side of the border. Question is, is the 15-year-old girl who accused him of sexual assault in 2013 still around to testify? She would be approximately 28 years old today. The case remains open.

Last but not least, rumors are quietly flying that while in Mexico, Guerrero was kidnapped several times by drug cartels, who knew he was on the run, and knew there was money to pay for his ransom. How true any of that is, who knows.

Like most things related to Omar Guerrero, as the saying goes — you can’t make up this stuff.