A Nueces County jury sentenced a Corpus Christi teenager on Monday to 45 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of attempting to kill a Corpus Christi police officer.<\/p>\n
Carlos Lee Suarez Jr., 17, was convicted of attempted capital murder of a peace officer, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and possession of a prohibited weapon.<\/p>\n
Suarez received 45 years in prison for attempted capital murder of a peace officer. He was also sentenced to 20 years for one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, seven years for a second aggravated assault charge, and 10 years for possession of a prohibited weapon.<\/p>\n
The sentencing followed a jury’s finding of guilt on all four charges.<\/p>\n
During the punishment phase of the trial, jurors heard testimony from the Corpus Christi police officer, prosecutors said Suarez attempted to shoot while trying to avoid arrest in December 2024.<\/p>\n
The officer told jurors he came within inches of being killed during the encounter. Prosecutors used a courtroom demonstration to show how close a bullet came to striking the officer in the head.<\/p>\n
Jurors also heard testimony from Suarez’s family members, who acknowledged he should be punished but asked for leniency because of his age.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors argued Suarez posed an ongoing danger to the community and sought a life sentence. Defense attorneys urged jurors to consider that Suarez was a teenager at the time of the offenses and argued he deserved an opportunity to rebuild his life.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, the case began in July 2024 when Suarez allegedly threatened two juveniles with a handgun. Months later, authorities said he attempted to shoot a Corpus Christi police officer during an arrest attempt.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also alleged Suarez possessed a handgun equipped with a Glock switch, which allows a firearm to fire automatically.<\/p>\n
Because of the seriousness of the allegations, Suarez was certified to stand trial as an adult after being transferred from juvenile court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Nueces County jury sentenced a Corpus Christi teenager on Monday to 45 years in prison after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1099,117531,155,157,156,55738],"class_list":["post-328938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-aggravated-assault","tag-carlos-lee-suarez","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-peace-officer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}