Eishmel Spears Jr., 69, was shot and killed while seated in his Chevrolet Silverado on the shoulder of Merganzer Avenue near Scenic Highway in Baton Rouge on June 7, 2023, at about 2:30 a.m. He had just dropped off a friend when multiple gunshots struck him; police found him dead in the driver’s seat.

Investigators arrested 22-year-old Tony Lanus and charged him with second-degree murder and illegal use of a weapon. The primary eyewitness was Lanus’s cousin, Delmonte Fatman Aites, who said Lanus, riding in the passenger seat, said he wanted to try out his gun and kill someone, then rolled down the window and fired several rounds at Spears’s truck. A Louisiana State Police forensic DNA analyst testified to a very strong match between Lanus’s DNA and a gun later recovered from his home.

At trial the defense attacked Aites’s credibility and noted that DNA on the gun did not by itself prove who fired it. The jury found Lanus not guilty and he was acquitted of the charges. Does anyone have information about Spears’s movements that night or saw the Silverado on Merganzer Avenue?