Christopher Fuentes’ daughter saw the fatal confrontation and later watched the case end with a no-contest plea.
SAN ANTONIO — The daughter of Christopher Paul Fuentes saw the argument with her boyfriend move from a nightclub dispute to a restaurant parking lot, then watched as her father was shot during a struggle at the driver’s side of a car.
Nearly 21 months later, the criminal case ended without the jury trial that had been scheduled to begin. Franco Xavier Summers, 34, pleaded no contest to murder Tuesday in Fuentes’ Nov. 9, 2024, death and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Visiting Judge Jefferson Moore accepted the plea and found Summers guilty. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss separate charges of assault involving family violence by strangulation and evading arrest or detention. The deal was reached just before opening statements, turning what had been set to become a contested murder trial into a sentencing hearing centered on the loss described by Fuentes’ family.
The daughter’s account had been central from the first days of the investigation. According to an arrest affidavit, she, Fuentes and Summers had been drinking at the North Side apartment where she and Summers lived before deciding to go to a bar. Fuentes, 43, had recently been released from prison and was staying with them. At the bar, Fuentes did not want to pay a cover charge. Investigators said the disagreement angered Summers, who drove the group and began arguing with Fuentes. The daughter told police Summers became “very irate” and repeatedly said he had a gun, a weapon she said she already knew he possessed.
Instead of remaining in the vehicle, Fuentes and his daughter got out near a Taco Palenque on Blanco Road and tried to leave the argument behind, according to the affidavit. Summers did not simply drive away. Police said he moved the vehicle alongside the pair as they walked. Surveillance footage later reviewed by investigators showed Fuentes approach the driver’s side and reach through the window, where he appeared to grab Summers’ arm. The brief physical struggle became the final encounter between the two men. The video, as described in court records and news reports, also showed Fuentes motioning for his daughter to run before gunfire erupted.
Summers fired several times and struck Fuentes, authorities said. The daughter ran into the restaurant for safety. She later told a television reporter that Summers had looked directly at her before shooting her father and that the memory of her father’s reaction stayed with her afterward. Her statement captured the personal cost of an event that police reports described in shorter terms: a disagreement, a pursuit in a vehicle, a struggle and multiple shots. Fuentes died at the scene. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him and ruled the death a homicide. No other person was reported injured in the shooting.
The daughter also helped investigators identify Summers after the shooting. Police did not find him at the restaurant that night. The next afternoon, officers were called to an apartment complex in the 18200 block of Blanco Road for a family disturbance and learned Summers was inside one of the units. Officers surrounded the area. After a period of time, Summers came outside and was arrested without incident, police said. He was booked on the murder warrant along with other unrelated matters. A judge initially set his bond in the murder case at $400,000, and the case then moved through the Bexar County court system toward trial.
By the time jurors were preparing to hear opening statements this July, Summers’ lawyer and prosecutors had discussed a possible plea. The San Antonio Express-News reported that defense attorney Martin Guerra and prosecutor Lauren Scott had been in talks before Summers decided on the agreement Tuesday morning. Moore was serving as the visiting judge after state District Judge Benjamin Robertson, who normally presides over the 226th District Court, recused himself. Summers entered a no-contest plea rather than a guilty plea. The court nevertheless found him guilty of murder and imposed the negotiated 25-year term.
The change in course meant jurors did not hear a full presentation of the daughter’s testimony or the surveillance recording. They also did not hear the defense question witnesses about the moments at the driver’s window, including Fuentes’ decision to reach into the vehicle and grab Summers’ arm. A plea can resolve a case without those issues being tested through a complete trial. The public record therefore contains the affidavit’s account and descriptions of the video, but not competing interpretations developed in front of a jury. The sentence reflects the agreement Summers accepted, not a jury’s assessment of each disputed detail in the confrontation.
What followed the plea was a different kind of testimony. Fuentes’ relatives spoke directly about him and the damage left by his death. His cousin Christina Fuentes told the court that he had been a grandson, son, father and friend, adding that a person did not have to be perfect for his life to have value. Cousin David Rocha described the killing as a loss that had shattered the family and left a lasting wound. Their statements gave the court a picture of Fuentes beyond the arrest affidavit, which had focused largely on where he was, what he did before the shooting and how the confrontation unfolded.
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales said afterward that the case illustrated how rapidly violence can escalate. He said Fuentes lost his life while trying to protect himself and people close to him, and he credited the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who worked on the case. The district attorney’s statement came after the plea had established Summers’ criminal responsibility for Fuentes’ death. That posture differs from the first reports in 2024, when Summers was an accused defendant who had not been convicted and investigators were still building the case from witness statements, video and the physical evidence collected after the shooting.
The sentencing also brought back public attention to a separate 2013 homicide investigation involving Summers. He was arrested then in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Roger Rodriguez Jr. and said he had acted in self-defense. Prosecutors later dismissed the murder charge because they said there was not enough evidence to proceed. The dismissal meant that case never produced a murder conviction. After Fuentes was killed, Rodriguez’s family and Fuentes’ family both spoke publicly about the earlier case and their desire for accountability. Their concerns became part of the public discussion around Summers, but the 2026 conviction and sentence concern only Fuentes’ murder.
Local records also show that Summers had other contacts with the criminal justice system, including a 2019 standoff that police said involved a woman and child being held inside an apartment. KSAT reported that Summers later served two years in prison in connection with that case. Those earlier matters offered background on why Fuentes’ relatives expressed fear after the 2024 arrest, but they did not decide the murder charge. The murder case was resolved on its own evidence and through the agreement Summers accepted just before trial.
Summers must serve at least half of his 25-year sentence before becoming eligible for parole, according to reporting on the plea. Eligibility is only the point at which release may be considered; it does not mean parole will be granted. With the murder conviction entered and the additional charges covered by the agreement dismissed, the scheduled jury trial is over. The daughter who was present when the dispute began will not have to give the public trial testimony that had appeared likely only hours before the plea.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.