Toby Fitchett Sentenced to 10 Years for Six Felonies

Toby Ray Fitchett was facing up to 99 years on an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge when he entered Judge Woodward’s courtroom on Monday. He was also facing up to 20 years apiece for running from the police in a stolen vehicle, carrying a gun as a career felon and two charges of failure to appear when he skipped off to North Carolina after running someone over at 2 a.m. on Oakes St. on April 26, 2013—another five years—and fleeing the scene.

Scheduled for a pre-trial hearing first thing Monday morning, Fitchett appeared with his attorney, Gonzalo Rios, and relayed to the court they’d like to plea. Fitchett had struck a deal.

At 2 p.m., courtroom full of men and women in chains and orange jumpsuits, Woodward called for silence as he heard the plea. “It’s not an easy plea to do,” he said, flipping through a stack of four indictments and a total of six felony charges.

According to court documents, Fitchett ran a man over on April 26 in the 200 block of S. Oakes and left him there, fleeing instead to stash his car in a friend’s parking lot, whom he called and told “he did not know what to do”. He then ran to North Carolina. Fitchett was indicted on a third-degree felony accident involving serious bodily injury charge in July 2013, however the charge was lessened to include only injury in his plea hearing.

After pleading guilty, Fitchett was sentenced to five years in TDCJ, the maximum for the offense.

Another indictment from 2013 included three counts and centered on the Nov. 3, 2013 theft of a vehicle Fitchett was spotted sporting around town by SAPD patrol officer Charles Barker. When Barker attempted to initiate a traffic stop, Fitchett tore off in the vehicle, ultimately crashing and running on foot. He was later caught on 26^th St. and a gun was found in the driver’s seat of the vehicle.

Charged with third-degree evading arrest with a vehicle enhanced to a second-degree felony, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, a third-degree felony and unauthorized use of a vehicle, a state jail felony, Fitchett pled guilty and was sentenced to 10 years on the first two counts and one year on the third.

A third indictment was handed down to Fitchett on March 30, 2014, when he was busted in possession of methamphetamine, a third-degree felony, followed by a fourth third-degree bail jumping and failure to appear charge on May 6, 2014. Fitchett pled guilty to both of those indictments and was sentenced to 10 years apiece per charge. All of his charges were enhanced to the second-degree due to prior felony convictions, expanding the possible punishment range from two to 10 to two to 20 years in prison.

As part of the plea, an Oct. 13, 2013 aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charge stemming from an incident in which he allegedly beat his girlfriend and held a knife to her throat was dropped. Another third-degree firearm and failure to appear charge was dropped as well.

In total, Fitchett was sentenced to serve 46 years, however all of his sentences will run concurrently. He’ll therefore have to serve 10 years before he is released from prison.