During a first appearance hearing on Dec. 7, a man arrested by the Columbia County Sheriff ’s Department insisted that his name was incorrect on the arrest records made by county deputies.
Booked in the Columbia County Jail as Lynos Lavette Williams, the suspect told the court that his name was Hector Gurzman and that the charges against him, which include residential burglary, criminal trespassing and second-degree criminal impersonation, were false.
Judge David Talley noted that residential burglary is a felony, with a sentence of five to 20 years in prison, while the other charges are both misdemeanors, each carrying a maximum sentence of one year.
“How is it that I am arrested for burglary when it is my own home?” the man asked during his hearing. He said officers fingerprinted him four times with inconsistent results and that he never spoke with a detective.
The man went on to claim that a sheriff’s deputy had the deed to his home; with handcuffed hands, he pointed at county deputies, prosecuting attorneys and news reporters around the courtroom, stating that there were eight people in the room that could retrieve those documents for him. Talley said in order for the man to see any documentation, there had to be a trial.
The man declined to sign an arrest affidavit presented to him during the hearing because it was assigned to Lynos Williams. A county employee replaced the name with “Hector Gurzman,” but he still refused to sign it. The man opted to have an attorney appointed to him, rather than hiring one himself, after a continued back-and-forth between himself and Talley.
Talley did not set a bond for the man during the hearing Monday.
As he left the courtroom Monday afternoon, the man said he had already received $8,000 in compensation after he was mistakenly arrested previously in 2018. Columbia County Sheriff Mike Loe said that no such compensation had been given to Williams since he was sworn in as sheriff on Jan. 1, 2011. Loe said the man was Lynos Williams, Jr.
There are no court records available online that indicate any arrests of Lynos Williams Jr. in Columbia County prior to Dec. 3, 2020. His father, Lynos Lavette Williams, was arrested in June 2017 in Columbia County and pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
A clerk in the Greg County, Texas District Court office said that Lynos Williams, Jr. was arrested by the Kilgore, Texas Police Department in June, 2014 and subsequently served 90 days in the Greg County Jail after a conviction for misdemeanor assault