Texas Janitor Gets 6 Years After Peeing in Cooler, Water Bottles and Infecting Coworkers with STDs

A Texas man who infected multiple employees at a Houston medical office with sexually transmitted diseases after peeing in their drinking water was sentenced to six years in prison this week.

Lucio Catarino Diaz, 53, pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a deal with prosecutors, who dismissed the additional seven counts of aggravated assault he was charged with as well as a single count of indecent assault, according to court records.

The deadly weapon, prosecutors say, was Diaz’s own bodily fluids.

Diaz’s actions were discovered by an employee of the medical office in September 2022, per a criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE.

That employee told authorities that her concerns began when she discovered “the water she got from the water dispenser had a funny taste and smell to it,” according to the complaint.

Not wanting to drink the “sour” water from that communal dispenser, she told police that she then elected to start bringing in her own water bottles each day.

Some days, she didn’t finish all her water and left the bottle on her desk, she told investigators. Soon, however, she “noticed her water from her personal water bottle that she brought from the store smelled nasty,” per the complaint.

It was so “horrible” that she decided to just throw away the bottle rather than investigate the source, she told police.

Three weeks after first noticing something off with the water in the communal dispenser, the employee discovered the source of the off-putting taste and smell when a co-worker offered to make her coffee.

The employee made sure to tell her coworker not to use water from the dispenser, since it was sour and smelled bad, handing her bottle to the coworker, per the complaint.

The coworker asked why the water inside was yellow. At that point, the employee took a whiff of the bottle and “smelled the odor of pee.”

At this point, the two women spoke to the doctor at the facility, who agreed to do a urinalysis test. The complaint says that the test came back positive.

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The employee told police she then bought a large bottle of water and put in clear view of a small hidden camera she set up on her desk to see if she could discover who might be urinating in her water.

She had just arrived home when she got an alert, at which time she turned on her feed from the camera and “observed the janitor, a person she knows as Lucio, open her water bottle, which was placed on her desk, unzip his pants, remove his penis from his pants, and place the head of his penis (bare) into her water bottle, causing the entire mouth of the water bottle to touch his penis,” reads the complaint.

The video then showed Diaz putting the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the desk.

This happened again the following night, according to the complaint.

Diaz admitted to his actions when pressed by police, according to the complaint, noting he “did it because he knew [the employee] would drink it the next day.”

On further questioning, Diaz explained to investigators that he had a “sickness.”

The employee had a panel of STD tests performed a few days later, which came back positive for Herpes simplex virus type 1, something she had never previously tested positive for, according to the complaint. Testing on Diaz revealed he was positive for the same virus, as well as chlamydia.

The District Attorney’s office classified Diaz’s urine as a “deadly weapon” because Herpes simplex virus type 1 can “weaken the immune system” and cause “bodily injury that creates a substantial risk of death,” the district attorney’

Multiple women discovered they had contracted STDs in the wake of this discovery. Diaz still faces a number of civil suits, court records show.

And despite a six-year sentence he could be out in as little as three after the judge agrred to give him credit for the two years he already spent behind bars.

Diaz was credited by the judge for two years of time served. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.