A 38-year-old Tucson man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for beating a man with a metal rod as he walked home near the Pascua Yaqui Reservation last December, leaving the victim with a broken arm. Sonny Reyes Lozano, an enrolled member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, struck the victim approximately eight times with the rod during the December 14, 2025 confrontation.
United States District Judge Rosemary Márquez handed down the 60-month sentence on August 19, followed by three years of supervised release, according to FBI Phoenix. The attack left the victim with a fractured ulna, and the case was formally resolved after Lozano pleaded guilty to a single felony count of Assault Resulting in Serious Bodily Injury, per the U.S. Department of Justice.
Already Under Federal Supervision When He Struck
At the time of the attack, Lozano was actively serving a term of federal supervised release stemming from a prior conviction, the Justice Department said. That detail proved significant at sentencing: prosecutors noted the December assault amounted to a violation of existing court oversight, an aggravating factor that fed into the ultimate five-year term out of a maximum allowable 10 years under 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(6), the statute governing assault resulting in serious bodily injury.
Federal prosecutors filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on December 23, 2025, under docket number 4:25-cr-05654, according to court records reviewed by PacerMonitor. The case was processed through the federal court’s Tucson division. The criminal investigation itself was a joint effort between the FBI’s Tucson office and the Pascua Yaqui Police Department, the same DOJ release notes.
Why the Case Landed in Federal Court
Because Lozano is an enrolled Native American and the assault occurred within Indian Country, jurisdiction fell to federal prosecutors rather than Arizona state courts. Under the federal Major Crimes Act, the federal government holds authority to prosecute major violent offenses — including felony assaults involving serious bodily injury — committed by enrolled Native Americans within tribal land, according to the Nebraska Law Review…