Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
Nola
April 24, 2015
A 77-year-old grandfather from LaPlace who shot a man during an argument on a Kenner street pleaded guilty Tuesday (April 21) to negligent homicide and agreed to serve five years in prison.Roger Batiste never denied he shot Shane Vicknair, 27, once in the chest during the altercation on May 3, 2013.
But he said he was defending himself, a claim prosecutors challenged in calling it second-degree murder. The question was to be decided by a Jefferson Parish jury, which was being selected Tuesday when attorneys in the case negotiated the plea agreement.
“It’s a tragic situation in which everybody loses,” Batiste’s attorney Juan Labadie said after his client pleaded guilty. “I am thankful that we were able to resolve it.”
The shooting happened just after 10 a.m., while the men argued in the 2400 block of Connecticut Avenue. Batiste told Kenner police detectives he had gone to the area to drop off a friend and was leaving when he drove up on a tow truck that was parked in the street.
Its driver was outside the truck speaking with Vicknair, and Batiste said he was unable to drive around it, according to transcripts of the statement he gave police. He said he sat in his pickup about five minutes before he asked the tow truck driver to move. He said that’s when Vicknair “started cursing me out.”
The tow truck driver eventually moved his vehicle, and Batiste said he was driving away when Vicknair ran up to his pickup. “He start(ed) cursing me out again, called me racial names and stuff and he told me, ‘Get out of the truck, get out of the truck,'” Batiste said.
“So I wouldn’t get out of the truck, so he ran up to the truck and he started punching me. So I put, I pick my, I had my gun on the side of the seat, and I picked the gun up and I thought, ‘You know, if he’d see the gun he would, … step back, you know or whatever.”
He asserted that Vicknair continued to punch him. “So I shot him,” he said. He added that he was “not trying to kill the man. I was try(ing), more or less trying to scare him. Then that’s what happened. That’s the way it happened.”
