Man charged in fight with kids was wrongly tied to boy’s 2021 murder
A Las Vegas man facing charges of child abuse and battery in connection with a fight involving juveniles captured on video was previously caught up in a high-profile case of murder and mistaken identity.
Jose Montes battered a child after intervening in a fight near Dell H. Robison Middle School last Wednesday, according to Clark County School District police Lt. Bryan Zink.
“The dad comes barreling through the crowd, starts beating up on this other kid,” Zink said. “At one point, the kid tries to run away, and (Montes) runs after him.”
A woman identifying herself as the victim’s mother posted a video of the altercation to Facebook last week. The video shows a crowd gathered around students fighting in the street, when an adult man runs in and begins repeatedly kicking and punching one of the children in the head.
Students in the background of the video can be heard screaming “You’re a grown a— man,” and “That’s a child!”
Zink says his agency has possession of a video of the fight and used it to identify Montes after a parent reported the incident on Thursday. Montes turned himself in on Monday.
In addition to child abuse and battery, Montes also faces charges of coercion, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and interfering with a pupil attending school. Montes, who is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning, did not have an attorney listed in online court records on Monday.
“It’s very disheartening,” Zink said. “It does not happen that often, that parents get involved in juvenile fights. … If we can prosecute parents for their involvement, we will 100 percent of the time. We expect parents to be the adults in this situation.”
Last year, as the district saw a spike in violent incidents on campuses, school police chief Mike Blackeye acknowledged that there had been incidents of parents coming to campuses and committing acts of violence against students, staff and other parents.
In one instance, a woman accused of hitting two teenage girls with her SUV told police she planned to “take them out” for fighting with her daughter.
This isn’t the first time Montes has made the news in an incident relating to children. In 2021, Montes briefly was sought in connection with the suspected killing of his son, but the accusations were dropped after the boy was found alive.
“I feel embarrassed to think they would even think something like that about me,” Montes told the Review-Journal at the time. “Everything I do revolves around my sons.”
After an unidentified boy’s remains were discovered off state Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump, police released a composite sketch of the boy to solicit help from the public in identifying him. A Las Vegas woman subsequently called police claiming the dead child was her son, 8-year-old Daniel Cisneros, whose father is Montes.
But Cisneros ultimately was found safe with his father on a camping trip in Utah. The homicide victim later was identified as 7-year-old California boy Liam Husted.
In an interview with the Review-Journal afterward, Montes said he sought to clear his name and wanted formal apologies from those who had suspected him of any wrongdoing.
“I want apologies directly,” he said at the time. “I haven’t gotten the right apologies that I deserve. To begin with, from the detectives. From Metro (police), from the coroner’s office. A call. A letter. Anything that … I can show my kids these are the apologies I got.”
The Review-Journal reached out to Montes on Monday, but did not immediately hear back. Ryan Helmick, the attorney who represented Montes in 2021, declined to comment Monday.
Contact Justin Razavi at jrazavi@reviewjournal.com. Follow @justin_razavi on Twitter. Staff writer Katelyn Newberg contributed to this report.
