Marcus Eriz made a behavior of carrying his loaded Glock 17 when he traveled the freeways. Custom-made with pink trim, a mag-well grip and a compensator to scale back recoil, the gun lay inside straightforward attain within the pouch behind the driving force’s seat. He needed it with him, he would clarify, as a result of “individuals have been performing loopy across the freeway.”
An Orange County jury on Thursday discovered the Costa Mesa man responsible of second-degree homicide, three years after he fired a single shot right into a passing automobile throughout morning rush hour on the 55 Freeway, killing a 6-year-old boy who was strapped right into a booster seat. Eriz, 26, faces 40 years to life in jail.
At his weeklong trial in Santa Ana, Eriz didn’t dispute that he fired the shot that killed Aiden Leos on Might 21, 2021. The case got here right down to his diploma of culpability, along with his public defender arguing that he was responsible of a lesser cost of voluntary manslaughter.
Eriz was a passenger in his girlfriend Wynne Lee’s Volkwagen that morning as they crossed the 55 Freeway close to Chapman Avenue, headed to work collectively. Joanna Cloonan was driving her son Aiden to kindergarten in her Chevrolet when Lee minimize her off, after which — by Cloonan’s account — flashed a sarcastic peace signal.
Cloonan responded by flashing a center finger on the Volkswagen as she handed. She remembered Eriz smiling at her from the passenger seat, then listening to a loud sound as she pulled away. It was a single bullet from Eriz’s gun, passing by the trunk and thru her son’s physique.
“As she drove away, in essentially the most cowardly style, [Eriz] fired a spherical at her to show her a lesson,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Feldman instructed jurors in his closing argument Wednesday. By his personal admission to police, Eriz “wasn’t even indignant” in the intervening time, however needed to ship the message “to not disrespect him.”
“He smiled, squeezed off that spherical, and went about his day,” Feldman stated.
An intense 16-day manhunt ensued, with banners asking “WHO SHOT AIDEN?” hanging from freeway overpasses. A witness had snapped a blurry image of the automobile, and ideas poured in. When police interrogated Eriz, he stated he had been carrying a gun for months as he commuted to his job at a collision restore store.
“Individuals have been much more hostile on the highway currently, so I’ve all the time had my Glock with me,” Eriz stated.
When the Chevrolet driver flipped him off, he grabbed it, racked it, opened the window and fired.
“You knew that there was a excessive probability that that form of motion would kill someone?” an investigator requested.
“Sure, sir.”
“And you continue to did it?”
“Sure, sir.”
Eriz stated that Cloonan had been “simply hostile in the direction of us,” however had posed no precise hazard.
At trial, the prosecutor didn’t need to show that Eriz meant to kill Leos, and even was conscious that the boy was within the automobile. The second-degree homicide cost hinged on the idea of “implied malice,” that means he knew capturing the gun was life-endangering.
Removed from being “some little boy who picked up his dad’s gun,” the prosecutor instructed jurors, Eriz handed a firearms security course, personally put in modifications on his Glock, and practiced with the weapon.
Deputy Public Defender Randall Bethune instructed jurors the capturing was the “rash” alternative of a younger man who had acted underneath the provocation of the freeway confrontation, and who instructed police, when requested why he did it, “I’ve no reply why.”
The smile Eriz directed at Cloonan earlier than the capturing was not a masks of chilly indifference, Bethune stated, however “a sheepish sorry-about-that” as apology for his girlfriend’s driving.
When he realized police had been searching for him, Eriz hid his girlfriend’s automobile as a result of he didn’t need to get her in hassle, the protection lawyer stated, however he didn’t flee. “He didn’t disappear up into the mountains of Weaverville, the place he’s from,” Bethune stated. “He didn’t go to Mexico. He stayed.”
The protection lawyer stated Eriz “feels horrible about what he’s executed.” Eriz spent a lot of the trial, at which he declined to testify, staring straight forward with a clean expression.
A decide will take into account his sentencing at a listening to set for April 12.
