Man faces 30-year sentence in 2013 murder of Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD employee

A man accused of fatally shooting a Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD employee almost a decade ago has agreed to plead guilty to murder, according to authorities.

Gerardo Alvarez, 46, was scheduled to stand trial in early May. On Thursday, he agreed to plead guilty to fatally shooting Todd Fenton in October 2013 for a 30-year-prison sentence, Carrollton police said in a news release.

“At the end of the day, he thought it’d be best to just take the 30 years and avoid a trial,” Alvarez’s attorney, Hugo Aguilar, said.

Late Oct. 2, 2013, officers were dispatched to a Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district bus barn in the 1500 block of Randolph Street, according to a police report. Officers found Fenton, who was 48 years old at the time, in a pool of blood with multiple gunshot wounds in the back at the location.

Alvarez, who fled to Mexico after the incident, was apprehended in October 2020 and was extradited to Dallas County in March 2021. He was at the Dallas County jail Thursday. He was indicted on the murder charge in absentia in December 2013.

“Unfortunately, Fenton’s wife, Kathy Fenton, passed away in March 2023, and was unable to see justice served for the devastating loss of her husband,” police said in a Thursday news release.