Punta Gorda man chooses to represent himself in 2018 murder trial currently underway

Standing before the jury Tuesday, a 26-year-old defendant stammered through his opening statements in a 2018 murder trial.

Juan Jose Salazar-Diaz wore a white turtleneck and dark suit for his first day of trial, several tattoos visible along his head, face and back of his hands. Salazar-Diaz was adamant that the evidence would show he wasn’t at the crime scene when 21-year-old Tyren Kinard, an openly gay Black man, was shot and killed inside his silver Chrysler 200 sedan.

While at times hard to understand or follow along in his statements, Salazar-Diaz focused on Kinard's closest friend, who was most likely the last to speak with him before he was killed, and who told detectives the person Kinard was going to meet the night of Sept. 7, 2018, was named "Quan."

About 30 minutes before his opening statement, Salazar-Diaz confirmed to Judge Thomas Krug that he would be representing himself during the trial.

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While uncommon, defendants have a legal right to represent themselves during criminal trials if they so choose. In Salazar-Diaz’s case, a couple of public defenders withdrew from representing Salazar-Diaz due to conflict of interests, and he appeared to not get along with another of his counsel who withdrew in June 2022 due to irreconcilable differences, according to court records.

Defense attorney Jennifer Strouf sat next to Salazar-Diaz at the defendant’s table in the courtroom, appointed and available to provide legal assistance or advice, but she did not represent him.

Salazar-Diaz was arrested by North Port police in December 2018 in connection to the death of Kinard, who was found dead near Red Oak Road and Sawyer Circle in North Port in September.

Salazar-Diaz is charged with murder in the second degree, grand theft of a vehicle and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Several media reports following the murder identified Kinard as possibly being a Black transgender woman, due to Kinard using social media accounts linked to the name Londonn Moore. Assistant State Attorney Karen Fraivillig confirmed to a Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter before the trial's start that Kinard was not transgender.

The State is expected to rest their case by Thursday afternoon with Salazar-Diaz then presenting evidence and calling on witnesses for his case.

'I knew something was wrong'

Madison Myers, 24, fought back tears as her voice hitched during her testimony Tuesday, speaking about her best friend since sixth grade and how she would never see him again.

Myers, who has a young daughter, said she and Kinard spent a lot of time together, spoke over the phone every day, and Kinard would sleep over at Myers' home often.

The last time Myers saw Kinard was Sept. 7, 2018.

Kinard had met up with Myers and her daughter at a Dollar Tree store in Port Charlotte to shop for a school project for Myers' daughter. After, Kinard intended to come over to Myers' home later that night to stay over and help with the project in the morning.

Myers testified that she called Kinard over FaceTime around 10:30 p.m. the night of the shooting and the two spoke as Kinard got ready to go hang out with someone. Myers added that Kinard didn't share details of who he was going to meet, but at one point she heard what she thought was the name "Quan" mentioned during the conversation. A fact she relayed to detectives.

During her testimony, it was difficult to distinguish at times in the courtroom if the name being said was "Quan" or "Juan."

When Myers woke up the next morning after the call ended and didn’t see Kinard, she started reaching out through calls, texts and socials. Then, police came to her door.

“I knew something was wrong because he wasn’t responding and he always responds,” Myers said.

In the early hours of Sept. 8, 2018, North Port police were alerted that an unknown individual, later identified as Kinard, was found lying in the roadway partially dressed with multiple gunshot wounds to their body and head, according to the probable cause affidavit and testimony from law enforcement during the trial.

Kinard was pronounced dead at the scene.

Photographs shown to the jury, taken by Christine Taylor with NPPD, showed what appeared to be two gunshot holes in the driver’s side window and “suspected dried blood” in the car.

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Taylor, a North Port Police Department records technician, walked the jury through more than three dozen photographs of the crime scene, the defendant’s home, the victim’s car and evidence collected during the investigation.

Back in 2018, Taylor was a crime scene investigator assigned to be the lead in gathering evidence for the police department. Taylor explained that six shell casings were collected — two on Sawyer Circle near where the victim was found and four within the victim’s silver Chrysler — along with a pack of Newport cigarettes, a white latex glove found inside the car, two bullets and bullet fragments.

North Port Det. Christopher Maki, the lead detective in the case, testified that limited GPS data pulled from Kinard's car placed the car in the 26000 block of Explorer Road in Punta Gorda an hour and a half after midnight, where it remained until police located it on Sept. 9.

Maki also told the jury that while they checked out a lead connected to a potential suspect nicknamed Quan who attended the same high school as Kinard, he was ultimately ruled out following a DNA swab that didn't match the evidence collected.

Police received a search warrant for Kinard's phone, which revealed Kinard’s last three phone calls were around midnight to a number police confirmed was associated with Salazar-Diaz. When police spoke with him on Nov. 11, 2018, Salazar-Diaz denied ever calling or knowing the victim, according to the affidavit.

North Port Det. Lee Wallace, a digital forensic expert, was able to recover certain key evidence in the investigation in October and November 2020 when data was extracted again from the defendant’s cellphone.

Among some of the evidence, Wallace was able to extract included photos of someone holding what appears to be a Ruger 9 mm handgun posed above a distinctly white and blue patterned fabric — the same fabric photographed by investigators as bedding on Salazar-Diaz’s bed in December 2018.

The data extraction also revealed internet searches in November and Dec. 18, 2018, a day before Salazar-Diaz was arrested, that included “what evidence does prosecution need to solve murder” and “homicide investigation first steps.” The internet searches also revealed news headlines for the North Port murder.

Det. Joseph Duke, another digital forensic expert with NPPD, walked the jury through cell phone tower data which showed which towers Salazar-Diaz’s phone pinged off of during the night of the shooting. In total, the defendant's phone pinged off three towers near his home and the crime scene the night of the shooting.

A crime laboratory analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement testified that the six cartridges found at the scene and in the car were fired from the same type of weapon. However, the analysis was inconclusive if the bullets collected were fired from the same gun or multiple ones.

Salazar-Diaz confirmed in his questioning of the expert that there was a list of firearms the bullets could have potentially been fired from and that the murder weapon was not recovered in the case for the expert to be able to do testing on.

A second FDLE crime laboratory analyst testified that a fingerprint lifted from the plastic sleeve around the Newport cigarette pack ended up being a match for Salazar-Diaz’s left thumb. The analyst did confirm that there is no knowing how long a print has been on an object and environmental factors can impact how long a print remains on an object.

Gabriela Szymanowska covers the legal system for the Herald-Tribune in partnership with Report for America. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America. Contact Gabriela Szymanowska at gszymanowska@gannett.com, or on X: @GabrielaSzyman3.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Trial underway: Punta Gorda man represents himself in 2018 murder trial