CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The former Corpus Christi police officer accused of impersonating a Child Protective Services case worker is heading to trial next month.
A docket call hearing was held for Norma Deleon this morning. Judge Sandra Watts set Deleon's trial date for Sept. 17.
Deleon is facing a charge of impersonating a public servant.
This morning's hearing comes after several twists and turns in her case.
Last Friday, Deleon appeared in court for a pretrial hearing. During that hearing, Deleon asked Judge Watts for permission to visit her former boyfriend in jail because she was pregnant with his baby. Her former boyfriend is retired CCPD Officer Tommy Cabello, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing his wife over a period of 17 years, on July 2.
An emergency hearing was held yesterday afternoon for Deleon after the court was told she would enter a guilty plea in her case. Instead, Deleon changed her story and told the judge she was not pregnant. She said she had several symptoms indicating she could've been pregnant but was wrong.
Watts then said she felt like she got played. As the judge proceeded to read the charge filed against Deleon, Deleon said that was the charge she was given, but that she had not committed the crime.
So, Watts said she could not accept Deleon's plea deal, and that she will stand trial on Monday, Aug. 6.
During this morning's hearing, Watts determined her docket schedule was full for the next few weeks and pushed Deleon's trial to September.
Deleon faces charges stemming from an incident that happened on Nov. 29, 2018.
According to the arrest affidavit, two officers were dispatched to an apartment on Carroll Lane at the request of Senior Officer Norma Deleon to help perform a welfare check on a child.
At the time, she was dressed in civilian clothes, but one of the officers later said Deleon was thought to be acting in an investigative capacity with CCPD.
Deleon reportedly told the child’s father that Child Protective Services needed to conduct a welfare check in his home, and he let her inside. Once inside, Deleon allegedly woke up the child, then used her personal cell phone to put the girl on FaceTime with her grandmother, who is Cabello's mother.
The affidavit states body camera video also exists from the uniformed officers showing the child’s father being detained while Deleon searched his apartment. The man later learned Deleon was not a CPS worker, and that she was dating Cabello.
Deleon resigned from the Corpus Christi Police Department on March 7.
Meanwhile, Cabello, Deleon's former boyfriend, is in the Nueces County Jail awaiting transfer to a state prison. On July 5, he filed a motion asking Judge Inna Klein to not send him to prison, but instead to give him shock probation.
Shock probation is a provision in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure that allows a court to maintain jurisdiction over a case after a defendant has been sentenced to either county jail or the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division.
