On the night of February 28, 2014, 21-year-old Cedric Recardo Patrick Jr. was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Taco Bell on Eisenhower Parkway in Macon, Georgia. Patrick was sitting in the front seat of a parked car when a single gunshot struck him in the back. Witnesses told Bibb County sheriff’s investigators the shot came from the backseat, where 27-year-old cousin Dominick Kantrel Howell Sr. had a pistol on his lap. Those witnesses said the firearm slipped and that Howell, attempting to catch it, caused it to discharge.

Patrick was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead at about 11:00 p.m. that same evening. Howell surrendered to law enforcement, described what happened, and was later charged with involuntary manslaughter and held at the Bibb County jail without bond. Few other details about the circumstances or motive are available in this account.