Viewer wants Medina to return awards after pleading guilty
In the wake of Wednesday’s guilty plea by former City Representative and County Commissioner Larry Medina to corruption charges, an ABC-7 viewer wants to know whether he will now return the three Conquistador Awards he’s received from the City of El Paso.
Conquistador Awards are reserved for the City’s elite. Among the recipients over the years of the City’s top civic award are the late-great Don Haskins, El Paso artist Tom Lea and UTEP President Dr. Diana Natalicio.
But Aaron Medina, an ABC-7 viewer, says Medina no longer deserves the ones he received from former Mayor Carlos Ramirez in 2001 and was nominated for by current City Representative Emma Acosta in 2009.
In an email Aaron Medina wrote: “My simple request and question is will somebody from the city ask mr. medina to return the conquistador awards now that he has pled guilty?”
Acosta, who nominated Medina for the latest Conquistador Award for his work with the no smoking ordinance for El Paso bars and restaurants and a resolution that still exists stipulating two percent of all debt issuance be set aside for the arts, said the email writer, Aaron Medina, is Larry Medina’s cousin.
Acosta added that said she thinks it’s personal since Larry Medina fired his cousin from his business.
ABC-7 tried to reach Aaron Medina to verify that but the station has yet to hear back from him. ABC-7 also asked Acosta whether the awards should be returned.
“I think that’s something entirely up to Mr. Medina,” Acosta said. “We don’t have a process where we ask people back for the awards once they’ve been given an award. I know the Mayor and I talked about it about a year ago. There’s no process. If they want to return it, that’s fine and if they don’t well that’s fine too.”
ABC-7 called Larry Medina, who admitted Wednesday to accepting a bribe for his help awarding a County contract and is out on bond awaiting sentencing in February. The question was whether he’d consider returning the awards, but the station was unable to reach him.
