WACO, Texas (KWTX) – A Georgetown man pleaded guilty Friday to firing a pistol during an altercation that left a Dallas medical researcher dead in a downtown Waco parking lot in 2024.
Cardea Xavier Banks, 27, formerly of Temple, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, deadly conduct and discharging a firearm in city limits in exchange for a recommendation from the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office that he be placed on deferred felony probation for eight years and fined $1,000.
Cardea Xavier Banks(KWTX GRAPHIC)
Judge Thomas West of Waco’s 19th State District Court will review a background report by probation officers before sentencing Banks on June 26.
In deferred probation cases, defendants can avoid a felony conviction and final judgment of guilt if they complete the terms and conditions of probation.
Banks was convicted of credit card abuse in Bell County in June 2023, and normally would not be eligible for probation on the firearm possession charge.
However, prosecutors intend to inform the judge of Banks’ willingness to cooperate and testify against Bralon Amad Buhl during Buhl’s murder trial last month.
Bralon Amad Buhl(Telemundo Central Texas)
Banks’ attorney, Phil Martinez, deferred comment until after Banks is sentenced.
Buhl was sentenced to 60 years in prison in the shooting death of Gilberto Moralez during a fight in the Cricket’s parking lot just off Franklin Avenue in downtown Waco.
Moralez, 41, a researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and other doctors with him that night were in Waco attending the American College of Sports Medicine annual Texas conference.
The group with Moralez and a group with Buhl got into a dispute inside Crickets over the way someone with Buhl treated a woman in Moralez’s group. The groups agreed to part ways, but the dispute erupted again outside in the parking lot.
Authorities said they think at least seven or eight shots were fired during the incident, including several shots from Banks.
Waco police crime scene technicians testified they found evidence of damage to three cars and a tree across Franklin Avenue caused by the spray of bullets. No one else was injured.
The incident was captured on grainy surveillance video, and Waco police investigators used video from other downtown businesses and social media accounts in their efforts to identify Buhl as the shooter and three other men who drove to Waco from Temple with him.
Copyright 2026 KWTX. All rights reserved.