Rapper Tay-K Found Guilty of Murder in Second Shooting Conviction

Tay-K has been convicted of murder for the second time. The 24-year-old was previously sentenced to 55 years in prison in 2019 in connection to a murder committed during a botched home invasion. Now, he faces an additional five to 99 years in prison after being found guilty for shooting and killing a photographer while fleeing authorities after the initial murder.

In 2017, an arrest warrant was issued for Tay-K, born Taymor McIntyre, in Bexar County, Texas. The document alleged that McIntyre was part of a group who picked up Mark Anthony Saldivar, a 23-year-old photographer in San Antonio, for a photoshoot that was supposed to take place at a nearby mall. While in the car, Saldivar is said to have been robbed at gunpoint for his camera equipment and fatally shot following the altercation, per Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

McIntyre was found guilty of murder, but not guilty of capital murder, which would have carried a mandatory life sentence. When he was previously convicted of murder in the shooting death of 21-year-old Ethan Walker in Tarrant County, Texas, a judge also ruled that he would concurrently serve a 30-year prison sentence for the first of three counts of aggravated robbery and 13 years each for the remaining two counts from the same robbery.

He was 17 years old at the time, and went viral after releasing the video for his single “The Race” — partially inspired by a real life event — in June 2017. After cutting off his ankle bracelet, he fled house arrest ahead of a court hearing for his part in the 2016 home invasion which occurred when he was 16. “It wasn’t part of the plan. The plan was robbery. Not killing,” Jeff Kearney, one of McIntyre’s defense attorneys, told the jury in 2019.