A man is accused of killing his neighbor over a $20 bet. It took 20 years to get him in front of a judge.

Maximo Reyes was set to appear in a Nueces County courtroom on Thursday. That hearing got pushed back. Court staff did not set a new date right away.

Go back to April 16, 2006. That night, Reyes got into a fight with a man named Elias Sanchez Sr. The fight started over a $20 bet. The two men had bet on a pay per view boxing match.

Police say Reyes shot Sanchez during that fight. It happened in the 600 block of NAS Drive. That is in the Flour Bluff part of Corpus Christi. Officers say Reyes shot Sanchez at least three times. Sanchez was 41 years old. He died before he could get to a hospital.

Police say Reyes also fired a shot at Sanchez's son. The son had tried to step in and stop the fight. He was not hit.

Officers arrested Reyes soon after. They found him near Holly Road and Rodd Field Road. He was charged with murder. He was also charged with aggravated assault. That second charge covers the shot fired at Sanchez's son. It is a serious charge because a gun was used to threaten someone's life, even though that shot missed.

Here is where the case takes a long detour. Reyes posted bond. That means he paid money to get out of the Nueces County Jail while he waited for his trial. Many defendants do this. Then Reyes skipped his court date. He never showed up. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest on September 24, 2007. A warrant is a legal order that tells police to find and arrest someone.

Investigators later learned Reyes had run across the border to Mexico. In 2008, the Nueces County Sheriff's Office asked the U.S. Marshals Service for help finding him. The trail went cold for years.

The Marshals later reopened the search. They used a team called the Corpus Christi Cold Case Unit. This team works on old cases that have gone unsolved or unfinished for a long time.

Working with police in Mexico, the Marshals tracked Reyes to a city called Tampico. It sits in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Marshals arrested him there on June 26. He was sent back to the United States the very next day, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

That is the short version of why a 2006 shooting is only now moving through court in 2026. Reyes was never on trial during those missing years. He was a fugitive. He hid across the border while the case against him sat open and unfinished.

Now the case is finally back where it started. It has taken nearly two decades since Sanchez died in that fight over a boxing bet. Reyes still faces the same two charges from 2006: murder and aggravated assault. No new court date had been announced as of this report.

Everyone is presumed innocent until proved otherwise.