15
years
A convicted human smuggler who threatened and spat on a highway patrolman during a drunk-driving investigation in Kendall County is headed to state prison for up to 15 years, prosecutors said.
Eric Nathan Aldaco, 35, of La Salle County, was sentenced Friday in the 451st state District Court after being charged in August with driving while intoxicated, harassment of a public servant and obstruction or retaliation, according to a release from the Kendall County District Attorney’s Office.
The charges stem from a traffic stop on Interstate 10 near exit 537, prosecutors said.
Law-enforcement records indicate Aldaco has a lengthy criminal history, including federal convictions for smuggling undocumented immigrants in 2010 and 2013, resulting in “substantial prison sentences and multiple revocations of his supervised release,” officials stated in the post.
The local case stems from the 2024 incident when a Department of Public Safety trooper observed a motorist failing to slow down or move over for emergency vehicles at an active scene.
The trooper stopped the vehicle, then noticed the driver had “slurred speech and bloodshot, watery eyes,” according to reports. The driver refused to submit to field-sobriety tests, officers said.
When the motorist was arrested, he “became combative,” resisted officers, “kicked at a patrol car door and window,” attempted to escape the patrol car after being secured and spat on a trooper, according to reports.
An eventual blood draw — delayed for seven hours because of the suspect’s uncooperative nature — registered a blood-alcohol content of .120, or well over the legal limit, according to court records.
According to the prosecution, the man continually berated the arresting officer, making “explicit and disturbing comments directed at the trooper’s family, and a blatant threat that he wished he could find the trooper ‘out in the streets.’” The detained man also claimed he had a history of assaulting police, stating he had once been charged with aggravated assault on a police officer after threatening the lawman with a knife, investigators said.
According to prosecutors, a woman in the car stopped by DPS “was visibly distressed with fresh injuries to her face, including a swollen upper lip and scratches/ lacerations on the right side of her nose.”
However, she denied the driver had struck her, investigators said.
According to prosecutors, Aldaco’s criminal background stretches from 2008 to 2024, and includes several felony convictions.
In 2008, the South Texas resident faced an injury to a child charge in La Salle County stemming from an initial indictment for sexual assault of a child, to which he ultimately pleaded to a lesser-included offense, prosecutors said.
In 2021, Aldaco was charged with aggravated assault against a public servant in La Salle County after he was accused of throwing a knife at a peace officer during a domestic-disturbance investigation.
Aldaco has also faced charges in La Salle, Laredo, Frio, Nueces and Anderson counties that include criminal trespass, assault, evading arrest, multiple instances of driving while intoxicated, resisting arrest, escape from custody and assault against a family member, according to officials.
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