Richmond, Texas: A former police officer convicted this week of three counts of aggravated assault by a public servant faces life in prison after a jury determined he knowingly put lives at risk when he drove 107 miles per hour without emergency lights or sirens and killed three people, including a mother and her teenage son, while responding to a robbery call in 2024.
Former Missouri City Police Officer Blademir Viveros, who was 27 at the time of the crash, was found guilty on all three counts Monday afternoon following roughly two and a half hours of deliberations. The punishment phase began Tuesday, March 25, in Fort Bend County district court.
The facts of the crash were not disputed by either side at trial. On the evening of June 20, 2024, the Missouri City Police Department received a call about an armed robbery at an ATM in the 1600 block of Cartwright Road. A robbery suspect had stolen $200 at gunpoint and fled in a silver Honda. Viveros, driving a marked 2021 Missouri City Police SUV, was responding to that call.
DRIVE TO SURVIVE SEMINAR
Prosecutors established that Viveros had a detainee, identified as Michael Hawkins, in the back seat of his cruiser at the time. Hawkins had been taken into custody at an unrelated assault call on Cartwright Road just prior to the robbery response. He was unrestrained.
Viveros was traveling at 107 miles per hour, with no emergency lights or sirens activated, when he struck a 2005 Toyota Corolla pulling out of a Dollar Tree parking lot. Angela Stewart, 53, and her son Mason Stewart, who had just turned 16 that day, were in the vehicle. Both were killed on impact, according to prosecutors.
Hawkins was not found in the back of the wrecked and burning police cruiser until hours after the crash, according to testimony. He was paralyzed and died from his injuries seven months later.
Chief Prosecutor Alison Baimbridge told jurors throughout the trial that the crash was entirely preventable. The defense argued Viveros had a servant’s heart and that the incident was a tragic accident, not a criminal act. Defense attorney Greg Cagle told jurors during closing arguments that a policy violation does not belong in criminal court as a felony offense.
The jury disagreed.
Rodney Stewart, a family member of the victims, spoke outside the courthouse following the verdict. He said he wanted Viveros to receive a long sentence so he could reflect on what his actions took from their family.
During the punishment phase, which began Tuesday morning, prosecutors called 15 witnesses and presented testimony about Viveros’s history of poor decisions going back to 2015, when he was 18. An officer testified that Viveros had applied for a position at the Richmond Police Department in 2020 and was disqualified because of traffic violations in 2015 and 2017.
Viveros faces a sentencing range of five years to life in prison.
