Tarance LaRod Sharp, 47, a Black male from Mart, Texas, was shot late on May 19, 2025, in the 100 block of South Commerce Street, a few steps from Mart City Hall. Officers responding around 11:29 p.m. found Tarance LaRod Sharp on the ground with a gunshot wound to the chest and an exit wound in his back; he was pronounced dead at the scene. The attack unfolded after a dispute in the area that night, drawing units from Mart Police, the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, and Riesel Police.
An official obituary later recorded the date of death as May 20, 2025, and listed visitation and services in Mart at Rocky Creek Baptist Church, aligning with the overnight timing of the shooting and its aftermath.
Investigators quickly detained a suspect at the scene. The man taken into custody was identified in subsequent reporting as 40-year-old Merlin Gonzalez, who told police that Tarance LaRod Sharp had pulled a knife during a confrontation and that he fired in self-defense. A witness described Tarance LaRod Sharp walking west along East Limestone Avenue after an earlier verbal altercation near South Pearl; the witness lost sight of Gonzalez and then heard a single gunshot minutes later. When officers arrived, Gonzalez was nearby, reportedly on the phone; a 9mm pistol in a holster lay about 15 feet from Tarance LaRod Sharp's body.
In the days after the homicide, authorities confirmed only that a suspect was in custody while they worked the case, asking anyone with information to contact county dispatch. Booking records later reflected that Gonzalez was held in the McLennan County Jail on a murder charge with bond set at $500,000 as investigators built their timeline of the fatal encounter and processed the scene off South Commerce Street.
Three months later, a McLennan County grand jury issued a no-bill decision, clearing Gonzalez of criminal charges in the death of Tarance LaRod Sharp. The panel's action adopted the self-defense narrative presented from the May 19 shooting, ending the criminal case that began with a late-night patrol call and the discovery of Tarance LaRod Sharp mortally wounded in the street.
Records tracking gun deaths list Tarance LaRod Sharp's killing in Mart on May 19, 2025, and catalog the incident location as the 100 block of South Commerce Street; those same records note the case among Texas shootings recorded that day. The public memorials and obituaries that followed named Tarance LaRod Sharp and set services in his hometown, closing the official arc of a case that moved from an immediate arrest to a grand jury's decision not to indict the man who shot him.
