Interesting questions to the last 2 posters, and I knew these questions would come up. Zach and Cody did know some of the people at the party, but they were not actually at the party, but you also can't expect good things to happen with a group of people anywhere at 4:30 in the morning. When they showed up the shooter and his friend thought they were the group of kids wanting to fight and ran up on them until they realized they were the wrong people. About that same time, the group of people wanting to fight did show up and Solomon pulled the gun immediately. (keep in mind, Zach had been at Wal-Mart for 2 minutes) Whenever Solomon pulled the gun, some guy in the opposite group saw the gun, got a crow bar/bat/some kind of blunt object, and hit Solomon and he started shooting and for whatever reason or another, he shot Zach first.
I would not have any problem saying "My idiot friend Zach got hammered, started a fight, and got shot" if that was the case just because it would have legitimately been his fault.
Please do not get me wrong. I wasn't trying to insinuate that your friends were involved in the fight directly, in any way. I just found it highly coincidental that your friends were an example of "wrong place, wrong time" and that they may be feeding you mostly truth, with a side of smoke up your arse.
All said and done, it sounds stupid to me. You are correct about nothing good coming of a drunken argument at 0430.
Even more curious is why the WalMart? Looking at a local map (assuming the party was in Leander as most of the news seems to think), it seems that somewhere at Lake Travis may have been about the same distance, but would have offered a less conspicuous as a venue for a fight. I am not a local, so I would not be familiar as to how populated or not the Lake Travis area is or isn't, but WalMart does not even make it to my top one-hundred list of low-profile places to arrange a fight
Regarding the "guy with the blunt object" his courage most certainly outweighs his aim or ability to whack someone if the guy was still able to shoot afterwards and wasn't unconscious. In fact, this is the most likely reason for an aggravated assault charge as opposed to attempted murder. There aren't too many conscious decisions to be made when someone has knocked you over the head.
I think your two friends learned a very valuable lesson. Do not go to Walmart at 4:30am to watch a fight.
ack-ack
I am still leaning towards this being the real story. I'm not saying that you are a liar, but that your friends probably are. They are probably feeding the same story to the authorities. Not admitting to tagging-along as a spectator gives a degree of plausible deniability and trims down the list of questions from the cops, parents, etc and also relieves one of the burden of ratting-out a friends drinking party in one, fell swoop. Admitting to attendance at the party opens a whole other exhaustive line of questions. As with an actor learning his lines, repetition makes the story perfect, and you are probably being used as a practice audience. If you can fool your closest friends, then the police should be cake.
