HARLINGEN — Frank Alan Taylor III and Byron Piñeda didn’t know each other.
But they encountered one another at a party in a Harlingen apartment in January 2016, where a fight broke out, police say.
It ended when the 16-year-old Taylor shot Piñeda, 32, in the back, killing him, according to police.
Taylor, now 19 years old, is set to go to trial tomorrow on a murder charge and four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Police say he shot at four other people at the party.
Piñeda, of Brownsville, was attending a party at the Rosemont Apartments in Harlingen when he was shot in the back early on the morning of Jan. 20, 2016. That was six days before Taylor’s 17th birthday.
Police said at the time the incident began when Piñeda got into a fight with a friend of the “suspect.”
That’s when Piñeda was shot.
“They were not close friends,” then police Sgt. David Osborne said at the time.
Piñeda was driven to Harlingen Medical Center by two women, according to the police report.
Officers were called to the hospital shortly after 2 a.m. in reference to a man who had died of a gunshot wound.
Five other people who were at the party were later charged with misdemeanor failure to report a felony.
Taylor is scheduled to go on trial at 9 a.m. tomorrow in Brownsville in the 138th courtroom of state District Judge Arturo Cisneros Nelson.
