Oscar P. Cerna is back in jail, now on retaliation charges, after threatening a woman who tipped off police about a homicide he was involved in.
According to an arrest warrant, a woman feared for her life after Oscar P. Cerna started threatening her over text. According to her statement, the threats started because he has seen reports that showed that she was the “snitch.”
Oscar P. Cerna was arrested in November on tampering with evidence charges, and his son was charged with the murder of Jacob Duffee. Duffee was missing from Levelland for several months until his body was found in a storm drain. Oscar Diaz Cerna remains in the Lubbock County Jail on those murder charges.
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According to the court documents, the woman stated that Oscar P. Cerna confided to her that his son, Oscar Diaz Cerna, had killed his boss, and he had helped dispose of the body.
The threats started on March 24. Cerna called the woman on a unrecognizable phone number. She stated the first thing Cerna said was “How could you do this to me and Oscar?”
The next day she started getting more messages from Cerna telling her that “he wanted to take her daughter because she had taken his son for life from him.”
In the police report, the woman stated she and her daughter felt threatened by the texts messages and started packing items to leave their house. They ended up leaving Lubbock for the night, she said in the statement, because of one of the last text messages Cerna had sent said he was going to get her no matter what.
Cerna also texted the woman’s daughter several times asking to take her to Oklahoma. In the daughter’s statement, she said she felt she was going to be hurt in return for her mother turning him in on the murder case.
Cerna also texted the daughter, “Text me back or its going to be worse for you,” and “Your mom took my son away from me for life so I’m going to take you away so we can be even.”
Oscar P. Cerna is now in jail on a $300,000 bond, and his son Oscar Diaz Cerna is on a $250,000 bond.
This week, Oscar Diaz Cerna’s lawyers filed a motion for bond reduction saying the bond is “excessive, oppressive, and beyond his financial means.”
