Repeat offender back in custody

A Carson City man who has escaped serious punishment over the past five years for numerous arrests related to violence and drugs, was jailed Monday night on suspicion of possessing eight grams of methamphetamine.

Fidel Luis Fuentes, 26, and Samuel Person, 26, were arrested at 8:40 p.m. in the 600 block of North Stewart Street on suspicion of felony trafficking.

According to the arrest report, an officer was driving on Robinson Street when he spotted Fuentes and Person.

"When the subjects observed us they immediately turned into the Nugget Inn parking lot and started walking at a much faster pace," the arrest report states.

"One male subject kept turning his head as if trying to see what we were doing and almost walked into a parked vehicle."

Officers allegedly found 10 grams of methamphetamine near Person, and eight grams of methamphetamine in Fuentes' pocket.

Each is being held on $20,000 bail.

Fuentes has a lengthy criminal record dating back to 2003, in which he allegedly kidnapped and battered his girlfriend. Then he allegedly attacked a married couple inside their home after they tried to help the girl, a stranger to them.

Kidnapping and domestic battery charges were dismissed, and Fuentes pleaded to burglary, for which he received three years' probation.

He was also the catalyst in the fatal shooting of his friend Juan Carlos Alegria, 23, in May 2004.

Alegria had accompanied Fuentes to his estranged girlfriend's Eighth Street apartment, when Fuentes spotted another man inside.

Fuentes broke down the door and chased Maximilliano Cisneros into a bedroom. When the romantic rival emerged with a gun, he opened fire, hitting Fuentes in the leg and killing Alegria, who never moved out of the front yard.

Home invasion charges filed against Fuentes after Cisneros' conviction of murder were later dismissed.

In March 2007, Fuentes was the passenger in a car driven by Robby Hernandez, in which Hernandez led two Washoe Tribal police officers on a high-speed chase that ended when Hernandez rammed a cruiser, seriously injuring a tribal officer.

Hernandez pleaded guilty to eluding a peace officer and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Fuentes pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess stolen property. He was given credit for 35 days time served and sentenced in October 2007 to a year in Douglas County Jail.

He was released from custody on June 16, having accrued about three months of good time credit, said Douglas County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Halsey.

- Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.