David Rodriguez, 34, Houston, and Luis Alexandro Reyna, 35, San Juan
“The empty-handed painter from your streets is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets…” – Dylan, “It’s all over now, Baby Blue”
Six Shooter Junction – Funny how tiny administrative details weave a fascinating pattern on the official record.
These things come in over the transom, as it were, when you’re part of a disenfranchised corps of journalistas in disfavor, held incommunicado with official sources – poodle negrito – as it were. Crazy things happen – every day. They lead to even crazier revelations, leading still nowhere. Just saying.
It’s a big swamp. Like Avis used to say, “We try harder.”
On April 3, 2015 Department of Public Safety arrested David Rodriguez, 34, of Houston, and Alexandro Reyna, 36, of the Hidalgo County city of San Juan, Texas, wholly contiguous with McAllen, located a rifle shot from the Rio Bravo.
The Drug Enforcement Agency had relayed a tip that one of two vehicles, a 2004 Lincoln Navigator driven by Reyna and escorted by a 2012 Ford Explorer blocker car driven by Rodriguez, had a large amount of heroin and methamphetamine on board.
When they located the pair and their cars at Hooters, near the corner of I-35 and New Road, an undercover DEA agent observed the duo meeting inside the breastaurant. The drug dogs alerted on 8 pounds of smack and 9 pounds of crystal in hidden compartments. An undercover DEA agent observed the duo meeting inside the breastaurant. They were charged, then indicted in January, 2016 with possession of the two drugs with intent to deliver, offenses that carry a possible sentence of 15 to 99 years and fines up to a quarter million dollars.
Here’s where it gets interesting. A friend who sometimes assists The Legendary with research was Googling along with the tumbling Google goons for mention of Criminal District Attorney Abelino Reyna and, quite by chance, found an agenda item from the Hidalgo County Commissioners Court dated May 6 from Abelino Reyna, Jr.
He is Operations Manager for Operation Stonegarden, Rio Grande Valley Sector. That’s a DHS op, and he is a Border Patrol official, but he requested that the San Juan Police “reallocate $7,809.10 (Patrol Overtime/fringe…to the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s (Patrol Overtime/fringe…” Just a routine matter.
Naturally, our Abelino Reyna is not a “Junior.” His dad is Felipe Reyna, once the District Attorney of McLennan County and an Associate Justice of the Texas 10th District Court of Appeals at Waco.
But here you have three Reynas, two of them with nearly identical names, involved in twin sister cities with the commonality of being located directly in the beaten path of major weight transactions in illicit narcotics. Like the real estate guys say, there are three things that matter most – location, location and location – when it comes to the territorial imperative.
Naturallly, getting excited about a coincidence of names like Reyna and Rodriguez in these parts is like sending out a global request for relationships between alias Smith and Jones in downtown London. Just saying.
But when it comes to tracing the major league base paths of the ball game between big league players in the game of los narcotrafficantes, the hub city of Waco is at the apex of both the acute and obtuse angles in the intersections of the Sunshine Strips of U.S. 77, I-35, and just a hoot and a holler from U.S. 81, U.S. 281, U.S. 67, Texas Hwy 6, Texas Hwy 36, U.S. 190 – et. al.
The cases of Reyna and Rodriguez bear watching, no doubt.
They say there are no moving violations and no speed traps on the Information Superhighway. Don’t know. Julian Assange spent his time in a fancy little hell hole in The City.
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