In a Texas courtroom, Franco Xavier Summers entered a no-contest plea moments before his murder trial was expected to begin.

SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting his girlfriend’s father after an argument that began over a nightclub cover charge and continued outside a North Side restaurant.

Franco Xavier Summers, 34, pleaded no contest Tuesday to murder in the Nov. 9, 2024, death of Christopher Paul Fuentes, 43. Visiting Judge Jefferson Moore accepted the plea and found Summers guilty before imposing the agreed 25-year prison term. The resolution came just before lawyers were expected to give opening statements in a jury trial. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors dismissed separate charges of assault involving family violence by strangulation and evading arrest or detention. The sentence closes the murder prosecution without a jury deciding the disputed events that led to the shooting.

The plea came after the case had reached the point where prosecutors were preparing to present evidence. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Summers had been discussing a possible agreement through defense attorney Martin Guerra and prosecutor Lauren Scott before deciding to accept it on the morning of trial. Moore was handling the case after the recusal of state District Judge Benjamin Robertson, who presides over the 226th District Court. A no-contest plea does not require a defendant to expressly admit the conduct in open court, but it allows the court to enter a conviction and impose punishment.

Fuentes’ relatives then addressed the court about the effect of his death. His cousin Christina Fuentes said Christopher Fuentes was a grandson, son, father and friend whose life had value despite his imperfections. Another cousin, David Rocha, described a loss that had permanently changed the family. Their statements shifted the hearing from the legal mechanics of the plea to the consequences of a confrontation that had begun with a disagreement over whether to pay to enter a club. Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales later said the case showed how quickly violence can grow from a relatively minor dispute and praised prosecutors and law enforcement officers involved in the case.

The shooting happened shortly after midnight outside a Taco Palenque near Blanco Road and Loop 1604. According to an arrest affidavit described by KSAT and other local outlets, Fuentes had been staying with his daughter and Summers after recently being released from prison. The three had been drinking at an apartment before deciding to go out. Investigators said Summers drove them to a bar, where an argument began after Fuentes did not want to pay a cover charge. The dispute did not end when they left. The affidavit said Summers became angry and repeatedly told Fuentes and his daughter that he had a gun.

Fuentes and his daughter eventually got out of Summers’ vehicle in the parking lot of the nearby restaurant and began walking away, investigators said. Surveillance video reviewed by police showed Summers drive alongside them. Fuentes then approached the driver’s side and reached into the vehicle, appearing to grab Summers’ arm. The men briefly struggled. The affidavit said Fuentes motioned for his daughter to run as the confrontation escalated. Summers then fired several shots, striking Fuentes multiple times. The daughter ran into the restaurant for safety, and no one else was reported injured. Fuentes was pronounced dead at the scene, and the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide.

Fuentes’ daughter became one of the central witnesses in the investigation. She told police that she had known Summers possessed a gun for about a year and identified him as the shooter after the killing. In a television interview after the arrest, she described seeing Summers look at her before shooting her father and said the images of the encounter continued to replay in her mind. Her account was consistent with the broad sequence investigators said was captured on surveillance footage: the argument, the pair leaving Summers’ vehicle, the confrontation at the driver’s window and the gunfire that followed.

Police did not arrest Summers at the restaurant. On the following afternoon, San Antonio officers responded to an apartment complex in the 18200 block of Blanco Road for a reported family disturbance. Officers determined Summers was inside one of the units and established a perimeter. He later came out and was taken into custody without incident, according to a police update. He was booked on the murder warrant and other unrelated charges. At the time of his arrest, a judge set bond in the murder case at $400,000. The prosecution later moved toward trial as investigators and lawyers reviewed witness accounts, surveillance video and the affidavit describing the events.

The 2024 case also renewed attention on Summers’ earlier criminal history, including a 2013 murder charge that did not result in a conviction. Court records and local reporting show he was arrested after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Roger Rodriguez Jr. Summers said that shooting was in self-defense. Prosecutors later dismissed the murder charge, citing insufficient evidence to continue the case. That dismissal is important to the legal record: it was not a finding that Summers committed murder, and the earlier accusation was not a conviction. KSAT also reported that Summers was arrested after a 2019 standoff in which police said a woman and child were held in an apartment; he later served prison time in connection with that case.

Relatives of both Fuentes and Rodriguez publicly raised the 2013 case after Summers’ 2024 arrest. Rodriguez’s mother told Univision that she still believed Summers was responsible for her son’s death and hoped the later case would bring accountability. Fuentes’ relatives expressed similar frustration and fear while Summers was awaiting trial. Those statements reflected the families’ views, not a new judicial finding in the 2013 shooting. The murder case that ended this week concerned Fuentes’ death alone, and the 25-year sentence flowed from Summers’ no-contest plea to that charge rather than from the earlier dismissed case.

The plea also eliminated the uncertainty of a jury trial. Prosecutors no longer had to persuade jurors how to interpret the brief struggle at the vehicle or how the earlier threats described by Fuentes’ daughter fit into the final confrontation. The defense, in turn, did not present a trial theory to a jury or challenge the state’s evidence through cross-examination. Because the case ended before opening statements, the public record does not contain a full trial presentation of the surveillance footage, witness testimony or any expert evidence that might have been offered. The agreement instead fixed the punishment at 25 years and dismissed the two additional counts covered by the deal.

Under Texas law as described by the court reporting on the case, Summers must serve at least half of the 25-year sentence before he can be considered for parole. Parole eligibility does not guarantee release; it means he may be reviewed after serving the required portion of the term. The sentencing brings the criminal case over Fuentes’ death to a close at the trial-court level unless later post-conviction proceedings are filed. For Fuentes’ family, the hearing provided a formal conviction and sentence nearly 21 months after the shooting outside the restaurant.

Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.