SAN ANTONIO – Updated Oct. 23 at 6:01 p.m.:
A jury took 54 minutes to find Gabriella De Arroyo guilty. De Arroyo will be sentenced Dec. 6 and could face a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.
Original story:
On the morning of March 2, 2018, Luis Arroyo and two other inmates, all awaiting trial on capital murder charges in separate cases, escaped from a third-floor recreation area in the Bexar County Jail.
The trio lowered themselves to freedom on a rope made of bedsheets after using a saw blade to cut through the recreation area fence, according to a prosecutor's opening statement Friday in the trial of Gabriella De Arroyo.
"Ms. De Arroyo is the one who went to Home Depot, and she bought the saw blade that was used to cut through the fencing," prosecutor Sam Lyles told the jury.
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Lyles said buying the saw blade was part of the escape plan De Arroyo orchestrated.
"Communicating through jail calls, jail visits, letters and through other people and talking in code they hatched out their plan," Lyles said.
De Arroyo's lawyer, Tony Jimenez III, denied that his client was the ringleader of those involved in the escape.
"Ms. De Arroyo was not the mastermind of an escape," Jimenez said during his opening remarks. "She was his mother."
The trio was arrested at a North Side Sonic restaurant less than an hour after the escape.
Two others involved in the escape, including the girlfriend of one of the men who drove them from the jail, are also facing charges.
If she is convicted, De Arroyo could face a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison.
