A tragic incident occurred on the North Side of San Antonio this past weekend, leading to the arrest of 32-year-old Franco Xavier Summers for the fatal shooting of 43-year-old Christopher Fuentes. The confrontation happened outside Taco Palenque near Blanco Road and Loop 1604, shortly after midnight on Saturday, according to KSAT 12 News.
The conflict reportedly started outside a nearby bar and escalated in the Taco Palenque parking lot, where Summers fired the fatal shots from inside his vehicle. The victim, Christopher Fuentes, was Summers' girlfriend's father. Summers has a long criminal record, including a dismissed murder charge from 2013 and a 2019 hostage standoff that led to a two-year prison sentence. Despite his history, Summers has spent relatively little time in prison, a fact that now deeply impacts the families involved.
"Franco looked me in my eye and then shot my father," Virginia Fuentes-Gonzales, the daughter of the deceased, recounted in an interview with KENS 5. The prior murder charge against Summers in 2013, wherein he was accused of killing Roger Rodriguez Jr., then a 17-year-old related to his ex-girlfriend, was dismissed on claims of self-defense—a dismissal the victim's family still disputes. "You don’t shoot someone four times in the back and get away with it because you claim ‘self-defense,'" argued Rodriguez's mother.
Both families are calling for justice, urging the Bexar County District Attorney's Office to fully prosecute Summers' latest charge. "We just want justice," a relative of Fuentes stated to KSAT 12, a sentiment shared by many affected by this and other cases where violence was not properly addressed by the law.
