A man is shot in a road rage incident Frank Saucedo, 43, male, was shot during a road-rage confrontation on the night of January 15, 2008, as his friends' sedan pulled out of the Smith's Food and Drug near 7000 South and 1000 East in Cottonwood Heights and merged onto Fort Union Boulevard. According to accounts later given in court, the group—driver Morgan Taylor, Saucedo in the front passenger seat, and Taylor's then-girlfriend, Layce Nielsen, in the back—encountered a small pickup that cut across lanes; both drivers felt the
other had cut them off. The conflict escalated alongside Fort Union near 700 East, where a shot from the other vehicle struck Saucedo in the back of the head. He was taken off life support the next evening and died at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray.
In the days after the killing, Midvale police released a composite sketch and description of the suspect vehicle, reported as a Toyota Tacoma pickup seen fleeing east on Fort Union. For years the case simmered, with Saucedo's family and friends left to grieve while investigators pursued tips tied to that sketch and truck.
A major break came in 2011, when police arrested 35-year-old Troy Warren Williams in connection with the shooting. Prosecutors moved the case forward at a 2012 preliminary hearing, where a judge bound Williams over for trial after hearing testimony about the late-night encounter outside the grocery store and along Fort Union Boulevard. In 2014, rather than face a jury on the original murder count, Williams pleaded guilty to first-degree felony discharge of a firearm, as well as second-degree felony manslaughter with a firearm enhancement and obstructing justice. A judge sentenced him to an indeterminate prison term of five years to life on the first-degree count, plus concurrent terms of two to twenty years and one to fifteen years on the other charges—bringing formal closure to a crime that began as a split-second flare of anger on a winter night.
