Ex-Roughnecks employee pleads guilty to video taping

The man accused of videotaping his former West Texas Roughnecks coworkers in the bathroom has pleaded guilty in state court and will serve probation time on six charges.

Ernesto “Ernie” Salcido, 32, pleaded guilty Monday to six counts of improper photography/visual recording and was sentenced to six concurrent sentences of probation and a $10,000 fine.

Salcido was arrested in May 2010 after an investigation uncovered photos of his coworkers on his laptop.

According to a police affidavit, the Allegiance HR Solutions Group began investigating Salcido in September 2009 after an employee reported he sent text messages to the employee’s 14-year-old daughter requesting sexual photos.

Police seized Salcido’s laptop, memory card and two cell phones from the company’s front office after Salcido was dismissed as assistant general manager, according to the affidavit.

Police found deleted video and image files from a hidden camera in the bathroom across from Salcido’s office.

According to the police affidavit, Salcido recorded a female cheerleader, a woman and a man. The indictments indicate one of the women was recorded on several different dates.

Although he was fired from his job in September 2009, he was rehired by current owner and general manager Dale Morris.

Morris said in 2010 that he didn’t know of the accusations against Salcido, although the mother of the 14-year-old girl and the former owner said he did, according to interviews with both at the time of Salcido’s 2010 arrest.

In a Friday interview, Morris said Salcido was a liar and Morris was happy to have healed from the entire incident.

 “I don’t even know that that’s deserving enough, actually,” Morris said about the sentence. “I don’t have anything to say about it because I don’t have anything nice to say at all.”

The mother of the 14-year-old girl also said Salcido, who was the mascot “Digger” in 2008 and 2009, asked her daughter to help him in and out of the costume and locked her and a boy in the locker room while he showered.

The mother of the 14-year-old girl said she has never been contacted by the District Attorney’s Office and she was upset her daughter’s case was never prosecuted.

“I think that he pled guilty is great; five years probation, I really dislike,” she said. “I think it should have been a lot more severe, but they only charged him with the videotaping stuff. They didn’t even charge him for the stuff that had to do with my daughter.”

She did say she was shocked when she found out what he did with the videotaping, despite what she knew about her daughter’s problems with the man.

The six counts were all state jail felonies. If he violates probation, Salcido could face between six months and two years in a state jail.

Salcido was arrested by Odessa police on a charge of indecency with a child by exposure for masturbating in front of two girls younger than 17 in 1999; however, those charges were not prosecuted due to lack of cooperation from the parents of the supposed victims, according to the district attorney’s office.

Salcido also was arrested on a class A misdemeanor charge of public lewdness in Tom Green County for “exposing his erect penis” to a woman in 2002, but pleaded no contest to the class B misdemeanor of public indecency, receiving deferred adjudication of nine months probation.

@OAcourts

TIMELINE

• March 1999: Odessa police arrest Salcido on charges of indecency with a child, exposure. The charges are later dropped.
• February 2002: San Angelo police arrest Salcido on charges of public lewdness. Salcido pleads no contest to a lesser charge of public indecency.
• September 2009: Salcido is fired by the Odessa Roughnecks organization as mascot and assistant general manager.
• April 2010: Salcido is hired by the West Texas Roughnecks organization as director of operations.
• May 6, 2010: Salcido is arrested as part of an investigation begun September 2009.
• May 8, 2010: Salcido is released from the Midland County Central Detention Center on $10,000 bond.
• May 10, 2010: Salcido turns himself in to the Ector County Detention Center on two outstanding warrants from his May 6 arrest.
• April 5, 2011: Salcido indicted by grand jury for 244th District Court.