Federal court records indicate an alleged Rio Grande City drug trafficker will plead guilty.
Evaristo Sepulveda, who was arrested in January 2020, has pleaded not guilty to the allegations but on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Randy Crane signed an order setting a re-arraignment hearing for him in early November.
Sepulveda, along with his co-defendants, which include his wife, Julisa Peña, his brothers, Daniel Sepulveda and Rene Sepulveda, along with Edgar Yvan Moreno Barragan and brothers Juan Indalecio and Jose Luis Garcia, face varying charges in the indictment against them all.
Jose Luis Garcia is the father of Jose Luis Garcia Jr., who in late 2019, was acquitted of murder in 2019 for the killing of 17-year-old Chayse Olivarez, the son of a rival Starr County drug trafficker.
He was acquitted despite walking the Texas Rangers through the crime scene and leading investigators to the gun used in the shooting after a jury determined he was illegally arrested and interviewed and apparently did not consider this evidence during deliberations.
Jose Luis Garcia Jr. is currently serving eight years in prison on a charge of tampering with a human corpse because Olivarez was dismembered and burned.
During the trial, the Texas Rangers first revealed that his father, Jose Luis Garcia, was a suspected drug trafficker and the slew of arrests in the case began in 2020.
Evaristo Sepulveda is charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and two counts of selling, distributing or dispensing a controlled substance.
He is accused of being involved in a Jan. 17, 2019, drug smuggling event involving a little more than 705 pounds of cocaine.
This alleged event occurred on a property on Midway Road where his brother, Daniel, was seen driving bundles of cocaine on an ATV, according to DEA testimony during his detention hearing.
One of the bundles was found close to Evaristo, who was holding a bag of corn while claiming to be there to feed livestock when agents found him.
All of the suspects were scheduled for a final pre-trial hearing Thursday morning with a jury trial to follow in early November.
The trial, however, has been rescheduled for December, court records show.
