Texas janitor sentenced for urinating in women’s water bottles, infecting one with herpes

A Houston janitor was sentenced to six years in prison for urinating in women’s water bottles, resulting in one of them contracting herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), police said.

Lucio Diaz, 53, pleaded guilty on March 18 to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from multiple incidents that occurred on Sept. 26, 2022, at a medical building, Harris County court records say.

According to a complaint filed in October 2022, multiple women accused Diaz of using his bodily fluids as a deadly weapon when he urinated in their water bottles.

A $1 million lawsuit was filed by Houston-based law firm Abraham Watkins on behalf of 13 women in 2023 against Diaz, his employers and his supervisors, KPRC and ABC13 reported.

USA TODAY contacted Abraham Watkins, who said they are working on providing a statement.

What did Lucio Diaz do?

The initial woman who reported Diaz’s behavior said everything began on Aug. 30, 2022, when she noticed the water coming from the medical building’s employee water dispenser had a “funny taste and smell to it,” according to the complaint.

The woman would immediately dump the water out and throw her bottle away, the court document said. She then began bringing her own 16-ounce bottle to work, which she would often leave on her desk for the next day due to her not being able to drink it all, the complaint reads.

According to the complaint, the woman then told police that after a few days went by, she noticed her personal water bottle randomly “smelled nasty,” but she could not figure out why. This prompted her to trash her water bottle, and to go buy another one, the document states.

It was not until Sept. 22, 2022, that she realized urine was in her water bottle after a colleague brought it to her attention, the complaint says. Once a urinalysis test determined the water in the woman’s bottle tested positive for urine, another woman in the same building said the same thing happened to her, according to the court document.

To catch whoever was urinating in women’s bottles, the initial woman set up a hidden camera under her computer and left her water bottle capped before heading home on Sept. 26, the complaint reads. Shortly after the woman left, the camera caught Diaz opening her water bottle, unzipping his pants and putting his penis inside the bottle before closing and placing it back on her desk, the court filing says.

Lucio Diaz admitted to putting privates in woman’s water bottle

The woman reported the incident to Houston police on Sept. 27 and gave the officers two different water bottles as evidence, one containing urine and the other one that Diaz put his penis inside, the complaint reads.

When police officers confronted Diaz, he admitted to sticking his penis inside the woman’s water bottle on two separate occasions, according to the court document. When officers asked Diaz why he urinated in the bottles, the janitor said he did it because he knew the woman would drink it the next day, the complaint says.

On Oct. 10, 2022, a separate woman who was victimized by Diaz told police that she tested positive for herpes simplex virus type 1 and chlamydia after drinking from her urine-contaminated water bottle, according to the court document.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Janitor sentenced for urinating in bottles, infecting woman with herpes