19-year-old San Angelo man pleads guilty to drive-by shooting

SAN ANGELO, Texas ( Concho Valley Homepage ) — A 19-year-old San Angelo man has taken a plea deal for eight criminal charges levied in relation to a drive-by shooting that occurred on 19th Street in August 2023.

According to court records filed within Tom Green County, Andrew Garza pled guilty on Sept. 4 to six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of deadly conduct by discharging a firearm. In exchange, he will be confined within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for eight years, with all charges running concurrently.

A complaint record also filed within the county stated that law enforcement was dispatched to the intersection of 19th Street and Brown Street on Aug. 3, 2023, in reference to a shooting. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders located a vehicle that had “significant damage to it from gunfire.” SAPD officers spoke with the vehicle’s owner and learned that she had been in the passenger seat at the time of the shooting.

The vehicle owner stated that she had picked up four people at the Nueva Vista Apartments but “let a man she knows only as Elijah drive.” She stated they were driving south on Brown Street when they stopped at the intersection of 19th Street, after which a passenger vehicle with what the victim said looked to contain multiple people slowly drove past their vehicle and stopped at the stop sign.

The people, who the victim was unable to identify or describe during her interview with law enforcement, began firing shots at her car from their vehicle. The victim told detectives that she was unable to see the shooters before their vehicle fled the scene.

Law enforcement then spoke with another one of the victims at Shannon, where lead bullet fragments had to be extracted from his head. The victim stated that he believed Greg Garza and Zachary Garza to be the shooters. Despite this, he later identified the two individuals as Andrew Garza and Tayden Thibodeaux.

After searching the scene of the crime, a camera that showed two individuals firing guns from the suspect vehicle was located. From this footage, SAPD was able to determine that the suspect’s vehicle was a dark-colored BMW passenger vehicle and identify the owner of the car as Tayden Thibodeaux.

The BMW would later be found traveling northbound in the 2400 block of Lily Street, where an SAPD officer identified the driver as Thibodeaux and the passenger as Garza. Law enforcement also saw that Garza was wearing the same clothing as one of the passengers of the suspect vehicle. Garza told detectives he had been swimming with Thibodeaux at the Ben Ficklin Low Water Crossing and riding home with him before denying being involved in the shooting.

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