BATON ROUGE — An East Baton Rouge Parish jury on Friday convicted Ladarius Coleman on three counts of second-degree murder, finding him responsible for a 2021 Memorial Day shooting at an apartment complex swimming pool. His brother, a co-defendant, is scheduled to go to trial on the same charges in March.

Second-degree murder carries a mandatory life term. Last month, Coleman turned down a plea bargain that would have seen him sentenced to 33 years in prison for manslaughter.

The victims ranged from ages 1 to 20. In an emotional closing, prosecutors told jurors that the youngest victim would have started school this month had she survived the attack. 

"She should be starting kindergarten," Assistant District Attorney Laura Tracy said.

Tracy said Coleman, 18, and his brother and co-defendant David Williams, 22, showed a complete disregard for life by attacking two others at the College Drive apartment complex. The state's theory was that the intended victims were ambushed because Coleman and Williams had had a beef with them.

A girl just shy of her second birthday, Ja'Tyri Brown, was caught in the crossfire and also killed.

“Ja’Tyri should be five years old," Tracy said.

Defense lawyer Javier Claiborne said the victims — Reginald Thomas Jr., 20; and Dewayne Dunn, 16 — had shown up with weapons at the pool first and that his client armed himself for protection.

"The prosecutor forgot to tell you one thing: who was there first," he said, calling the victims the aggressors and suggesting they wouldn't have taken guns to the pool unless they were planning on doing something themselves.

Tracy said, however, that Thomas fired a weapon because he was provoked.

“Reggie jumped up in response to a stimulus,” the prosecutor said. “Nothing they did that day justified their death.”

Coleman was 15 when the killings occurred and had been set for trial with Williams. Williams' trial was separated from Coleman's and scheduled for March.

Earlier in the trial, jurors saw videotape evidence so gruesome that one member of the panel said she couldn't continue and was excused. Judge Fred Crifasi also warned spectators in the courtroom about what was on the surveillance video of the apartment complex so anyone wishing to avoid it could leave.

The prosecution wrapped up its case with a purported confession from Coleman. Coleman asked Crifasi to suppress the evidence, with his lawyer arguing that, 11 minutes into an interrogation, Coleman asked to speak to an attorney but questioning continued.

Crifasi granted the suppression and an abridged version of the interrogation was shown. 

During the June 2021 interrogation, Coleman said that he did not know Dunn and Thomas and told his brother “I think we should go.”

Several witnesses testified Thursday that Coleman and Williams had interacted with the victims before the shooting by saying “I told you I was gonna catch you,” and “Bitch, don’t move.”

The siblings’ mother, LaToya Coleman, is to go on trial in December on charges that she helped to pair flee to Texas to avoid arrest. Another man, Kaleb Turner, pleaded guilty as an accessory after the fact and was sentenced to probation and a deferred sentence. A revocation hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 3.

Prosecutors noted their success in getting justice for the three victims but acknowledged the terrible events that went down on Memorial Day 2021. 

"You always hope that someone gets the message, and we hope that this sends some type of message. This family will never be the same, all the families will never be the same, and we still have another one to go," District Attorney Hillar Moore said.

The victims' relatives are satisfied that the first of the two murder trials is now behind them.

"We came together as three families, we were three families coming into this, but we're one family coming out of this and all three families are very, very satisfied with today's verdict," Hope Provost, Brown's grandmother, said.

But the families are still devastated by the monumental losses.

"I will continue to feel the way I feel because I will not be getting my baby back, they're not coming back but I will continue to push on us as one whole," Shameka Murray, Dunn's mother, said. "I had no doubt that we would get justice for our babies and the time has come and we did."

Thomas' mother, Twianna Rayburn, hopes the senseless violence that took away her son, Dunn—who she said was like a brother to Thomas—and Ja'Tyri Brown can come to an end.

"I don't understand for the life of me why young people feel now that they can resort to such drastic violence to take away lives," Rayburn said.