Wichita meth distributor gets 10 years in prison after second arrest

A man who has twice been caught distributing drugs in Wichita while living in the United States illegally has been sentenced to spend 10 years in federal prison.

Jesus Torres was sentenced on Thursday in U.S. District Court to 120 months in the Bureau of Prisons. He previously pleaded guilty to felony charges of possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute and possessing a firearm by someone illegally in the United States.

Torres, who was also known as “Chuma” and “Ernesto Benetiz,” was indicted in January 2019 after his second narcotics arrest in a seven-month span, according to court records, including his plea deal with prosecutors. He was 30 years old at the time he was charged.

He was first arrested by the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office in June 2018, but he wasn’t criminally charged until after his second arrest by the Wichita Police Department in January 2019.

The original indictment included five counts of being a prohibited person in possession of a gun, two counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and two counts of possession of a gun in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Most of the charges were dropped by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as part of a plea deal that called for a sentencing range of 10-12 years in prison.

In the first arrest, Torres was a passenger in a car that was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy in Wichita. He gave the deputy a fake name, which led to a vehicle search that turned up three handguns and two bags of a white substance. They were found under Torres’ seat and the seat behind him. Forensic tests determined the bags contained about 271 grams of meth.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation statistics show that meth cost as much as $5,000 per pound in 2018, so the drugs in Torres’s possession were worth a little less than $3,000.

In the second arrest, Torres was driving a car that was stopped by police in Wichita. Officers found two handguns and an unspecified amount of suspected meth during a subsequent search.

As part of his sentence, Torres was ordered to forfeit the three guns from his first arrest, which were 9 mm handguns manufactured by Ruger, Jimenez Arms and CZ. It is unclear what happened to the two handguns from the second arrest, which were a Davis Industries .380 caliber and an American Arms 9 mm.

Deportation or any other immigration consequences of the criminal convictions would be handled in separate proceedings.

This story was originally published February 21, 2021 at 2:47 PM.