Dalton Edward McQuillin was 24 when he was shot dead on the evening of August 12, 2019. Deputies answered a 911 call about a shooting near Chestnut in north Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, and found McQuillin in the front yard of a Weaver Cemetery Road residence with a single, fatal gunshot wound to the head; he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators arrested 66-year-old Robert Eugene Vascocu at the location. Detectives tied the confrontation to an ongoing child custody dispute involving McQuillin and Vascocu’s granddaughter, and recovered the suspected murder weapon while processing the scene.

Vascocu was initially charged with second-degree murder. A grand jury later returned an indictment for negligent homicide; in December 2021 he pleaded guilty to that charge. In January 2022 a judge sentenced him to five years at hard labor and a $5,000 fine, the maximum for negligent homicide; a later motion to reconsider the sentence was denied.

Did anyone in the Chestnut area see or hear anything that night that could shed more light on what happened?