The mayor of a southwestern Texas city was arrested and hauled away outside a council meeting Tuesday night, in a raucous scene just weeks after he and other top officials were hit with a federal indictment on corruption charges.
Advertisement
A Zavala County Jail supervisor told KENS 5 the mayor of Crystal City had a controlled substance on him when he was taken into custody last night, and he now faces a felony drug charge.
Another member of the town’s City Council faces human trafficking charges for allegedly smuggling undocumented immigrants into the country.
Crystal City Mayor Ricardo Lopez was arrested for “inciting a riot” during a recess at the meeting, according to The San Antonio Express-News. But he came back and scuffled with a member of the angry audience and was detained.
Lopez and two councilmen were indicted this month in a bribery investigation; one of those councilmen later resigned. The town’s city manager, mayor pro tempore, a councilman, and a former councilman were all arrested in the federal sting, and a second councilman was arrested in an unrelated bust about a month before that. (Petitioners voted to recall him and other officials after the first arrest.) At some point, KSAT reports, he began ordering cops to arrest a woman who “touched him earlier”.
That raised doubt about whether the city council would have the quorum required to continue its work as planned Wednesday night after the meeting a night earlier was cut short. I believe it was a prescribed medication that wasn’t in the right container.
Advertisement
The council meeting has been rescheduled for this evening. AP material published by LongIsland.com, isdone so with explicit permission. This includes the preparation of derivative works of, or the incorporation of such content intoother works.
