On the afternoon of November 22, 2025, 31-year-old Fall River resident Taiquan Teixeira was shot outside Leonard’s Package Store on Pleasant Street after police received 911 calls reporting a fight between two men in the area. Responding officers arrived around 4:30 p.m. to find Teixeira lying on the ground unresponsive with a gunshot wound near the entrance to the liquor store in Fall River’s Flint neighborhood.
He was rushed by first responders to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead a few hours later despite emergency treatment. Publicly available reports identify him as a 31-year-old man from Fall River; they do not specify his race or ethnicity.
In the hours and days that followed, authorities treated the case as a homicide and emphasized that the shooting appeared to have stemmed from an altercation outside the liquor store rather than a random attack. The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office and the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit joined Fall River Police in the investigation, canvassing the Pleasant Street area and reviewing surveillance footage from around Leonard’s Package Store to reconstruct how the confrontation escalated to gunfire. Neighbors described a heavy police presence on the block immediately after the shooting, with cruisers, K-9 units, and detectives in the street. Some residents told local media that emergency responses to that corner had become sadly familiar, recalling an earlier stabbing in the same vicinity and speaking about frequently hearing or seeing disturbances in the area. Friends who spoke to reporters remembered Teixeira as protective and caring, someone who would “do anything for everyone,” with an easy sense of humor and a personality that drew people to him, deepening the sense of loss felt in the community after his death.
Within a few days, investigators publicly identified a suspect. On November 26, 2025, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III announced that 32-year-old Kendrick Williams of Fall River had been arrested earlier that day in Jacksonville, Florida, in connection with Teixeira’s killing. According to prosecutors, Williams is charged with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, carrying a firearm as a subsequent offense, and carrying a loaded firearm; he is being held without bail in Florida while authorities arrange his extradition back to Massachusetts. Officials have also noted that Williams had existing probation violation warrants tied to a prior armed home invasion case and masked armed robberies, which are now under Bristol County supervision.
Law enforcement agencies have not released a detailed narrative of the moments immediately leading up to the shooting beyond confirming that it followed a physical confrontation between at least two men outside Leonard’s Package Store and that Teixeira was the sole victim. As of the most recent public reporting, authorities have not disclosed a specific motive for the dispute, and no additional suspects have been named. The case remains an active homicide investigation managed jointly by the Massachusetts State Police detectives assigned to the district attorney’s office and the Fall River Police Department, who continue to seek a full accounting of how a late-afternoon altercation on Pleasant Street ended with Teixeira’s death and a fugitive arrest hundreds of miles away.
