Newly released city documents show a City of Odessa employee who was fired Jan. 13 for sharing pictures of an undercover police vehicle shared them with his son, who was later arrested on suspicion of murder.
According to an internal complaint, detectives investigating the Dec. 27 death of Maurice Rogers, 36, executed a search warrant on a cell phone belonging to Harvey Gutierrez Jr. on Jan. 5.
They discovered his father, Harvey Gutierrez Sr., a fleet worker within the equipment services department of the city, had sent him five photos of a pickup truck on Nov. 14 that was seized by the intelligence unit and outfitted to be an undercover unit, with red and blue emergency lights, the report stated.
The younger Gutierrez told his father via text he thought it was a “nice” truck and asked who it belong to and his father told him “Undercover,” the report stated.
Gutierrez Jr. replied, “Oh (expletive) ima stay on the lookout.”
On Nov. 28, the older Gutierrez sent three more photos of the truck showing the truck with the emergency lights activated from the front and the rear, the report stated. Gutierrez Jr. didn’t reply.
Officers went to check on Maurice Rogers Dec. 28 when he didn’t show up at work and they found his body inside his East 36th Street home.
Harvey Gutierrez, Jr. 31, told detectives Rogers’ sons attempted to rob him and he, a 16-year-old boy and Ashton Isiah Munoz, 18, conspired to shoot up one of the son’s cars, but Rogers ended up being shot instead.
Gutierrez Jr. was arrested Dec. 29 and the two teenagers were arrested separately during the first week of January in El Paso.
