A former Precinct 6 deputy pleaded guilty to manslaughter. It took 10 months to indict him and 36 more days to arrest him.

Former Harris County Precinct 6 deputy constable Rigo Vivar has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the August 2024 wrong-way crash that killed 28-year-old Ricardo “Ricky” Resendez Jr. on Canal Street. Getting there took two years: ten months to indict him, then 36 more days to arrest him.

Why it matters

A case involving a sworn officer is the one where the public most needs to see the system move at normal speed. This one moved slowly at every step, and the constable’s office that employed him was still withholding records a state ruling said it had to release, as of the last public update in March 2025.

Vivar is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 20, KHOU reports. He faces 2 to 20 years in prison.

By the numbers

Aug. 24, 2024. Vivar, off duty and in his personal vehicle, drove the wrong way on Canal Street and struck Resendez’s car, per KPRC 2 and Houston Public Media. Resendez died at the scene.
Late September 2024. The District Attorney’s Office told ABC13 that manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charges would go to a grand jury.
18 public records requests ABC13 filed with Precinct 6. The office quoted nearly $11,000 to fill nine of them, then asked the Attorney General to let it withhold everything. The AG ruled it had to release a redacted crash report. As of March 2025, ABC13 reported, it had not.
June 30, 2025. Grand jury indictment for manslaughter, per KPRC 2. Houston Public Media says the charge was filed in late June.
Aug. 5, 2025. Arrest and first court appearance, 36 days after the indictment. Bond was set at $100,000, per KPRC 2.
Sept. 18, 2026. ABC13 reported, citing court records, that Vivar pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Nov. 20, 2026. Sentencing, per KHOU. A judge, not a jury, will set the punishment.

The other side

A fatal crash investigation is not a traffic ticket. Reconstruction, toxicology and a grand jury take time, and a defendant who happens to be an officer should not be charged faster to make a point any more than slower to protect one. The plea is a conviction on the charged offense, and it spares a grieving family a trial.

Most of that is fair, and the plea is the right outcome to have reached. But the family did not ask for speed for its own sake. They asked what was happening, and for months, by the accounts in ABC13 and Houston Public Media, nobody told them. A records ruling the constable’s office did not follow is not an investigation taking time. It is an office declining to answer.

The family told KHOU it had hoped a jury would hear the case and set the sentence, and that it had no say in whether a plea was offered. That is how Texas plea bargaining works. It is also why the Nov. 20 hearing is the only public accounting this case will get.

What to watch

Nov. 20: the sentence, and whether the court explains it on the record.
Whether Precinct 6 has released the redacted crash report the Attorney General ordered. No public update has been found since March 2025.
Whether the District Clerk record shows the court and cause number. None of the coverage read for this piece names either.

Bottom line

The guilty plea closes the question of what happened on Canal Street. It does not close the question of why an office that enforces the law needed an Attorney General ruling to release a crash report, and then did not release it. Precinct 6 can answer that before Nov. 20.

Sources

Editorial