Arlington Rapper Tay-K Sentenced to 80 Years for Murder

Tay-K will have plenty of time to eat noodles, but God knows they won’t be good.

On Monday, a jury in Bexar County convicted the rapper, whose real name is Taymor McIntyre, on one count of murder. The following day, he was sentenced to 80 years.

The charge stems from the 2017 slaying of Mark Anthony Saldivar, a 23-year-old photographer who the Arlington rapper gunned down outside a San Antonio Chick-fil-A. The murder happened during the commission of an attempted robbery against Saldivar, prosecutors said.

The killing is one entry in a checkered history of violent crime for McIntyre. In 2016, McIntyre was involved in a home invasion in Mansfield, the commission of which culminated in the shooting death of 21-year-old Ethan Walker. For this crime, McIntyre was convicted of capital murder and aggravated robbery in 2019 by a Tarrant County jury, who imposed a 55-year sentence that the rapper has been serving since.

The aftermath saw the rise of McIntyre’s celebrity. While he was under house arrest in 2017 awaiting trial, McIntyre cut off his ankle monitor. During his monthslong flight, McIntyre murdered Saldivar and fled to New Jersey, where he recorded his single “The Race” and its accompanying music video.

The U.S. Marshals Service issued a statement on June 26, 2017, announcing a manhunt for McIntyre, who was arrested four days later without incident in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The lyrics to “The Race” were key evidence for prosecutors in that case and were successfully used to argue that McIntyre posed a danger to society (“Shoot a fuckboy in his motherfucking face”) and rendered him a flight risk (“Fuck a beat, I was tryna beat the case / But I ain’t beat the case, bitch I did the race.”) Prosecutors also used a scene from the music video in which McIntyre poses with a fake wanted poster with his face, and a March 2017 tweet that said, “fuck dis [sic] house arrest shit fuck 12 they gn hav 2 catch me on hood[.]” (The rap also includes the line "Pimp gon' be eatin' good noodles every day.")

Since his confinement, McIntyre has also accrued multiple charges of possessing prison contraband, namely cell phones.

It is worth noting the significance of McIntyre being convicted of murder instead of capital murder on Monday.

In Texas, capital murder requires an intentional killing of another human being (murder) plus an aggravating factor that either involves the commission of another felony or makes the killing especially heinous (for example, committing a murder during a prison escape or murdering someone under the age of 10).

Although Texas carries out the death penalty for capital murder, McIntyre was a juvenile while committing his string of offenses, and the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment against juveniles unconstitutional in the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons. This holding applies explicitly to criminals who were under 18 while committing a capital offense; McIntyre was 16 when he murdered Walker.

McIntyre’s two sentences run concurrently (so he will serve 80 years and get credit for both the 80 and 55 years, should he be alive by then), and he has received credit for 2,077 days.