Jury finds man who shot acquaintance to death in a Fort Worth street guilty of murder
A jury on Thursday found guilty of murder a man who prosecutors in a trial argued had, at the end of a night of heavy drinking, shot to death an acquaintance with whom he had a two-year grievance.
After about 90 minutes of deliberation, the panel convicted Peter Cardona in the September 2020 killing of 19-year-old Alfredo Olivares in the street outside Olivares’ house in Fort Worth.
Before the trial, Cardona elected to have the jury determine his sentence if it found him guilty. Judge George Gallagher, who presides in 396th District Court in Tarrant County, sent jurors to a lunch break with the expectation that they would hear witness testimony in a punishment phase when they returned. Sometime later in the interlude, Gallagher interviewed a juror on a matter about which the judge did not elaborate on the court record. The defense then requested that Cardona be permitted to change his punishment election, and the state agreed to allow Gallagher to sentence the defendant after a probation officer completes an investigation report.
Gallagher could sentence Cardona, who is 25, to a prison term of between five years and 99 years or to life.
Cardona’s defense lawyers, Micheal Schneider and Emily LaChance, argued that the killing was justified because their client was defending himself from Olivares. The defendant testified that Olivares reached for something as he walked toward Cardona in a street, narrowing the distance between them, and that Olivares had verbally threatened to kill him. A reasonable person considering the circumstances from Cardona’s point of view would assess the encounter as Cardona did, Schneider and LaChance argued.
When he was shot to death, Olivares was on house arrest as a condition of his bond in connection with an indictment on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Police concluded that Olivares had, at his house about a year before he was shot to death at the same location, shot a friend as he attempted to shoot another person.
Prosecutors argued that the Olivares killing, on Valentine Street near Clover Lane in the Alamo Heights section of Fort Worth, was not an instance of legitimate self-defense and was instead motivated by anger that flared within Cardona when Olivares referenced a beef.
Cardona and Olivares were acquaintances and their relatives were close. About two years before the killing, Cardona believed Olivares had broken a window, confronted Olivares and was assaulted by people associated with Olivares at his direction, the defendant testified.
“He’d had enough,” Tarrant County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Lucas Allan in a closing argument told jurors of Cardona’s thinking when he shot the victim. Allan prosecuted the case with Assistant Criminal District Attorney Kyle Russo.
Cardona testified that he intended to leave a party at the Valentine Street house and was walking toward his pickup truck when Olivares began to yell at and follow him.
Olivares used an expletive and said he would kill Cardona and his family if he was not paid money he was owed, Cardona testified. The defendant testified he did not owe Olivares.
Cardona, whose right hand is deformed because of a birth defect, told jurors that he reached into a pocket for keys and looked over his shoulder.
“I seen him reaching for something,” Cardona testified. Cardona said that he took from his waistband a pistol that he always carried when outside his house and fired at Olivares, who sought cover.
Olivares was fired upon six times, according to audio from a neighbor’s surveillance video recording. He was struck by two of the 9mm rounds .
Olivares’ decomposing body was exhumed about three months after he died when a review of an autopsy report suggested that he likely suffered a second gunshot wound that a forensic pathologist had misidentified.
A projectile that entered Olivares’ lower back was noted in the first autopsy report prepared by Dr. Marc Krouse, then the chief deputy at the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
In Olivares’ embalmed body, a second gunshot wound, to the left side of his abdomen, was properly documented by another physician during a second exam. Krouse misidentified that gunshot wound as a surgical stab wound, testified Dr. Kendall Crowns, the current chief Tarrant County medical examiner who was not at the office when the Olivares autopsies were conducted. Krouse left the office in April 2021.
The error was not an element in the central legal questions at trial, which focused instead on whether Cardona’s description of a threat was truthful and legally merited the killing because it was, among other factors, imminent.
Krouse’s work did not change the nature of the homicide, Crowns suggested in his testimony.
“The errors by Dr. Krouse did not alter the fact that he died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen,” Crowns said of Olivares.
While a portion of the last minutes of the encounter between Cardona and Olivares was recorded by a surveillance camera, the shooting was not.
After he was shot, Olivares walked into his house and found his mother. LaChance suggested in a closing argument that it was not clear whether he possessed a weapon.
“We have no idea whether Alfredo Olivares was armed,” LaChance said.
In an interview with Fort Worth homicide unit Detective Joey McAnally and Detective Paul Vega, Cardona said that he did not see a weapon. A video recording of the interview was shown to the jurors.
After the shooting, Cardona said, he dismantled his gun, tossed it into a creek, drove home and fell asleep.
This story was originally published February 16, 2023 at 9:33 PM.
