A motorist accused of striking a fire truck while driving inebriated will have plenty of time to stay sober after a judge handed him a 50-year prison sentence for his seventh drunk-driving conviction.
Court records cited by law enforcement and Kendall County prosecutors also show a lengthy criminal history for the man in addition to the intoxication charges.
The five-decades sentence delivered Friday by Judge Kirsten Cohoon in the 451st state District Court came just two days after a Kendall County jury found Dennis Lee Giddings, 58, guilty, marking his seventh driving-while-intoxicated conviction.
In this latest case, Giddings initially was changed with DWI-third or more incident, a felony; resisting arrest, search or transport; and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
According to law-enforcement officers, the case began when a driver plowed into a Boerne Fire Department ladder truck on July 4, 2024, on Upper Balcones Road while firefighters were returning from a call for a structure fire.
The court learned a firefighter operating the truck spotted the vehicle approaching head-on in the wrong lane at a high rate of speed. Despite the firefighter’s best attempts to avoid the collision, the errant vehicle struck the rear of the fire apparatus, shearing off a heavy steel stabilizer foot, investigators said.
The damage was so extensive the ladder truck remains out of service, the court was told.
After the impact, firefighters attempted to render aid to the driver, who — according to investigators — met them with “immediate hostility,” cursing and “falsely accusing them of causing the collision,” according to officials.
First responders also noted “a strong odor of alcohol” emanating from the driver and his vehicle.
Department of Public Safety troopers and Kendall County sheriff’s deputies rushed to the scene.
The motorist refused to perform a field-sobriety test and resisted efforts to arrest him, officers said. It took a sheriff ’s deputy, an Emergency Medical Services administrator and a trooper to restrain the man, prosecutors said.
The driver remained “combative and verbally abusive” during transport to the hospital and, once there, he refused to provide a mandatory specimen to determine his blood alcohol content, the court was told.
A search of the man’s vehicle revealed a halfempty 750ml bottle of vodka in the glove compartment, an empty vodka bottle in the back seat and three full bottles of liquor in the trunk, officials said.
During the sentencing phase, prosecutors presented the jury with Giddings’ extensive criminal history; some of the offenses were committed while he was under supervision for prior convictions.
Officials said his DWI history dates back to a 1985 conviction in Bexar County, up through arrests and convictions in 2024.
In 2007 in Kendall County, Giddings was convicted of aggravated assault while on parole for a 2004 case, receiving a 20-year prison sentence after he was accused of holding a knife to the throat of an 11-year-old boy.
At the time of the new charges, which led to the current prison term, Giddings was on parole for the aggravated assault case, officials said.
The latest episode was prosecuted by assistant criminal district attorneys Derly Chapa and Alessandra Deike.
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