Alleged food-contaminator is innocent

BURNET, Texas (KXAN) - A Burnet County jury quickly decided Tuesday morning that Jaime Perez was innocent of any charges that he contaminated Burnet Police Chief Paul Nelson’s food.

Nelson said the jury came to the decision Tuesday morning, and it came not even a day after the trial started, which was Monday afternoon.

The verdict is an interesting twist, but it's something restaurant owner Andy Steffen aligned with back in November 2008.

"My personal opinion is that he didn't actually do it," said Steffen more than a year ago. "He ran his mouth and said he did it."

Still, the restaurant took a fall despite what the owner thought.

Andy's Landing in Burnet shut its doors for good just a little more than a year ago on Nov. 8, 2008, nearly two weeks after a couple of cooks were charged with tainting the police chief's food.

It did not take long for the eatery to lose the positive reputation Steffen had built, one that earned Andy's Landing recognition as a local favorite for hamburgers and seafood.

Steffen said business dropped 50 percent after Perez, 23, and James Ledesma, 33, were arrested, both taken into custody while at work.

Steffen expressed his discontent with the situation when he showed up at the restaurant to begin cleaning out his office. He said he was just reaching a point in his business where he was kind of breaking even.

It was an abrupt and unexpected end to his first experience owning his own restaurant, which he opened in March 2007.

According to an arrest affidavit, Perez bragged about contaminating Nelson's order, telling a citizen he "wiped" himself with a hamburger bun he was serving. Perez also said he put the veggies in his mouth before placing them on the burger and proceeded to spit and blow his nose on it.

Investigators said an officer's dash cam video on Oct. 11, 2008 also captured an unruly Perez ranting about the chief and stated he spat on the buns and rubbed the buns "on his buns."

At the time of its closing, the restaurant had a dozen employees.