Juan Antonio Cardenas.
What was this student thinking, meeting up with three shifty beaners by himself?
If he was getting $1,500 out of this one deal, he could have at least paid for a bodyguard or something.
The man who fatally shot an 18-year-old former Highland Park High School student during a January drug deal is in custody, authorities said.
Juan Antonio Cardenas, 19, was booked into the Dallas County Jail on Dec. 19 on a charge of capital murder.
Police wrote in an arrest-warrant affidavit that Cardenas was one of three people who robbed Joseph Pintucci at gunpoint the night of Jan. 24 in a parking garage at The Shops at Park Lane in northeast Dallas.
Officers found Pintucci about 10:15 p.m., slumped over in the driver’s seat of a white Lincoln sedan near Dick’s Sporting Goods. He had been shot, and he died later at a hospital.
According to the affidavit, Pintucci had met with Cardenas, 24-year-old Rene Eduardo Montanez Jr. and a third person to sell about 50 THC vape canisters — worth about $1,500. As they negotiated a price, the trio all pulled guns on Pintucci, police said.
Rene Eduardo Montanez Jr.
The unidentified person grabbed the cartridges, which were in a Crown Royal whisky bag, and Cardenas fired a single shot at Pintucci as the three ran away, police said. A witness reported seeing them laughing as they fled.
Two days after the slaying, police arrested Montanez on a capital murder charge.
Joseph Pintucci.