Double murder defense: Shooter with shirt or shirtless?

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The Fresno man accused of a double murder last year started building his defense Tuesday. Tony Torres, Jr., and Tony Torres, Sr., were gunned down in Northeast Fresno in June 2013.

Even though 23-year-old Michael Rincon was caught on camera with the murder weapon, his defense is that a teenager was the shooter. As of Tuesday, two other teens have changed their stories and are backing Rincon's version of events.

Michael Rincon has denied killing Tony Torres, Jr., and Tony Torres, Sr., since the first time Fresno police interviewed him. In fact, he even denied being there when the father and son were shot to death.

"On that day? No (I wasn't there)," Rincon said in a videotaped interview a couple weeks after the murders.

"You weren't there?" asked homicide detective Leonard Cabrera.

"No, like I told you, I was at church -- Celebration," Rincon said. "I don't know the exact streets but it's in Clovis by Costco."

Surveillance video tells a different story. From one camera you see Rincon leading a group of boys approaching the parking spot where the shooting happened. From another, you see him running away, carrying the murder weapon.

Rincon's defense team says the guy at the back of the pack, Carlos Flores, ran to the front, took the gun, shot the Torreses and threw the gun back at Rincon before they all ran away. But the video also shows Flores is shirtless, so one independent witness's description doesn't fit that story.

"You're looking over there and what do you see?" prosecutor Jeff Dupras asked witness Phia Yang.

"I see a person shooting into the SUV (where the victims were sitting)," Yang said.

"What was the person wearing?" Dupras asked.

"I remember him wearing a dark shirt," Yang said.

But Nicholas Tuco is the teen who was right behind Rincon. He says Flores was the shooter, then threatened them all, so Rincon told him to lie about the shooting and pin Rincon. Instead, he told police he didn't know who did it and testified he avoided pinning Rincon for fear of Flores.

"Why is it you thought Carlos would hurt you if you said our defendant did it?" Dupras asked Tuco.

"Because Michael, I mean Carlos, pointed a gun at me and told me if I said something he would hurt me and my family," Tuco said.

Rincon's defense attorney told Action News he does expect his client to testify in his own defense. Rincon is facing life in prison if he's convicted.

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There were a couple areas where witnesses' gave contradictory testimony. Phia Yang, for example, said his then-9-year-old son told him he thought the shooter was shirtless, which would support the defense claim that Flores was the shooter. But the younger Yang couldn't remember what he saw when he was on the witness stand Tuesday.

Nicholas Tuco's testimony didn't match up with that of other witnesses in a couple areas:

He and Andrew Mann, Rincon's brother, both said they stopped in Rotary Park and that's where Flores got the gun back from Rincon and issued his threat. But Tuco and Mann gave different locations in the park where it happened.

Mann and Lisa Rincon, the defendant's sister, acknowledged they've seen police reports on the case, which their mother showed them. Lisa Rincon testified her mother also shared those reports with Tuco. The prosecutor, Dupras, asked Tuco a couple times if he'd seen those reports and the 18-year-old denied seeing them. Tuco lives with the defendant's mother and Michael Rincon referred to him as a "brother" in his videotaped police interview.

Lisa Rincon testified she saw Flores fiddling with "something" in his waistband when the boys came to her house before the shooting. Prosecutors say she told a defense investigator she saw Flores with a gun. Rincon was in tears as she discussed her testimony to her mother and Tuco in the hallway after she was done testifying.