When Gonzales Police Detective Dominick Rodi showed up at Carver Park on Oct. 8, the aftermath of the nighttime shootout and chaotic escape by dozens of people left the seasoned investigator with one word to describe the scene — "mayhem."
Two cars were wrecked, one person was dead, another seriously injured and permanently paralyzed, a few guns were left at the scene and bullet casings were everywhere, the police detective recently testified.
Gonzales investigators have concluded the shooting, in which more than 70 bullets were fired, resulted from a planned fistfight in the isolated park that quickly turned to gunplay, rattling neighbors late on a Sunday night.
Police arrested nine people whom the grand jury has charged in connection with the shooting and Ascension Parish prosecutors have cast one side of the dispute as the instigators and primary antagonists.
This group includes mothers of the some of the youths involved, including a public school bus driver and a UPS worker.
In a hearing on the shooting earlier this month, defense attorneys for two of the suspects, Sheron Parker Bell and Titus Robinson, challenged the strength of the police investigation and accused officers of picking sides and rounding up people who were simply there to watch the fight, not to participate.
"Merely being at a place where a crime is committed is not a crime," said Shannon Battiste, public defender for Robinson.
Battiste and Ryan Volo, the defense attorney for Bell, were able to raise enough questions about the case and offer assurances of their clients' return to court if freed from jail to convince a judge to grant them bail.
They previously had been held without bail since their arrests in late December.
The charges remain intact, however. Robinson, 22, of the community of St. James, is one of five people accused of firing a gun and faces one first-degree murder count and 12 attempted first-degree murder charges among other counts.
The other suspect, Bell, is a 43-year-old Gonzales mother. With four children ages 16 and younger, she works at UPS and has no prior criminal history. She faces counts of being an accessory after the fact to murder and to attempted murder, inciting a riot and other charges.
Battiste said some 100 people were at the park and officers made the victims in the dispute the side for which people were killed or seriously injured when that side also bore culpability.
"The victim was going out there to start s**t and she happened to get killed," he said.
That victim, Akira Youngblood, a 22-year-old Louisiana Army National Guard member and college student from St. James Parish, was fatally shot in the melee and was involved in a car crash during an attempted escape from the park while under intense gunfire, police have said.
Her brother, Kai Youngblood, is the person who had a beef with someone on Bell and Robinson's side the dispute, Tyedrius "Poodle" Parker, 22, of Gonzales. Kai Youngblood had believed Parker was calling him out via social media messages for a fistfight at Carver Park, police have said.
A beef with two sides?
In warrants and testimony, police have said Tyedrius Parker's side had more-serious intentions than the settling of a score with the fist. The group formed up at a car wash in the heart of Gonzales before heading to the park in a convoy, and appears, based on the evidence and witnesses’ statements collected so far, to be the only side with guns, police said.
Rodi, the police detective, testified that the opposing Youngbloods' side of the dispute included two children younger than 1 year old while Parker's side split into two groups and fired at the Youngbloods' side from two locations after cornering that group in the park with their vehicles.
While police say they have eyewitnesses who identified some in Parker's group, including Parker, as firing the guns, defense attorneys for Robinson and Bell attempted to poke holes in the specific evidence against their clients during a bail hearing earlier this month.
Under questioning on the stand, Rodi, the police detective, acknowledged to Robinson's defense attorney that no witnesses saw Robinson fire a gun, unlike others accused of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
What officers have found is Robinson's cellphone at the scene in a pile of spent 0.40-caliber shells and an image of him holding a pistol with another accused shooter taken a few days before the shootout in Gonzales.
Robinson also acknowledged to police that he had been at the park the night of the shootings and police have recovered surveillance video of him being at the car wash preparing to convoy to the park before the shootings.
Battiste, Robinson's defense attorney, said it's at least possible Robinson didn't fire a gun but simply lost his cellphone when he ran from the gunfire.
"So, is it not foreseeable that someone running while bullets are being sprayed, east and west, would lose their phone?" he asked, adding that possibility raises the prospect of reasonable doubt.
The UPS worker
For the other suspect, Sheron Bell, her defense attorney Ryan Volo also has questioned whether her presence at the fight or at a pizza party in Gonzales the next day where several of the suspects had gathered constituted a crime.
He also attacked what role his client, who is accused of inciting a riot, played in stirring disorder in the park.
Detective Rodi said she was seen yelling and shouting at the other side and clearly had knowledge of what occurred at the park. But he also acknowledged to Bell's defense attorney that Bell didn't call for a fight or violence and that the other side was yelling also.
Through questioning of the Gonzales police detective, Volo raised the idea his client was only at the park to protect her son from a fight.
She is the mother of Tyedrius Parker, whom police say is one of the shootout's prime antagonists due to his dispute with Kai Youngblood. Parker is among those facing murder and attempted murder counts.
Bell's husband also testified on her behalf, telling the judge he was struggling to continue working and also care for their children while his wife was in jail. He added that her time in jail had her close to losing her job at UPS.
Two days after the bail hearing, Judge Cody Martin of the 23rd Judicial District Court granted Sheron Bell bail of $115,000 and she was released from jail on March 15. The order was made public three days later.
Martin set Robinson's bail at $300,000 but he remained in parish jail Sunday. Battiste said his client can't afford that much bail.