SAN ANTONIO – A man arrested in connection with a fatal shooting outside a North Side restaurant early Saturday morning has a long criminal history, including a previous arrest for murder.
Franco Summers, 32, was arrested by San Antonio police Sunday afternoon in connection with the incident that happened just after midnight that same day.
Police said he shot and killed Christopher Fuentes, 43, in a parking lot near Taco Palenque, located near Blanco Road and Loop 1604.
Fuentes was the father of Summers’ girlfriend, police said.
A preliminary report from SAPD said the two men had gotten into a dispute outside a nearby bar.
After Fuentes and his daughter walked away from that location, Summers drove up to them in the restaurant parking lot and exchanged words with the father, the report said.
At some point, Summers fired shots from inside his vehicle, hitting and killing Fuentes, police said.
“It’s hitting us pretty hard that he’s gone,” a relative of Fuentes told KSAT 12 News Monday morning. “We’ll never be the same.”
The relative wanted to conceal her identity out of fear that Summers, who remains in jail, somehow might retaliate.
Police identified Summers as the suspect with the help of witnesses, then tracked him down at an apartment complex a couple of miles from the murder scene.
“Now that he’s locked up, I still don’t feel 100% safe because there’s a possibility that he could get out on bond,” Fuentes’ relative said.
Her fear is based, at least in part, on Summers’ previous history with the law.
Court records show despite numerous arrests, Summers has served relatively little time behind bars.
KSAT 12 News covered a deadly shooting in January 2013 in which he was named as the suspect.
A then-21-year-old Summers told police that he shot and killed 17-year-old Roger Rodriguez, Jr. in self-defense.
The charge against him in that case was dismissed a few months after his arrest, pending further investigation.
In 2019, police also named Summers as the man who they arrested after a standoff in Stone Oak.
Police said he had been holding a woman and child hostage in an apartment there.
Summers later served two years in prison in connection with that case.
Other charges filed against him throughout the years were settled with deferred adjudication, court records show.
After this latest murder arrest, though, the family of the victim, Christopher Fuentes, is hoping things will end differently and that Summers won’t see freedom again.
“We just want justice,” the relative said. “If it was my choice, he would get the death penalty. But I want life without parole. I don’t think that he should be out on the streets.”