Testimony began Thursday in the murder trial of a man accused of killing someone during a shooting outside a Baton Rouge nightclub.
Michael Robinson, 25, is being tried for second-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the October 2024 shooting that left 35-year-old Dexter Cormier dead and five others wounded.
Shortly before dawn on Oct. 20, 2024, a volley of gunshots crackled through the early morning air outside the Sunrise All Entertainment Event Center, an after-hours night club nestled in a strip mall in the 9700 block of Greenwell Springs Road. The site has since been converted into a church.
Dozens of revelers who were gathered in the parking lot scrambled away and made mad dashes to their vehicles to escape the property. BRPD Lt. L’Jean McKneely was among four uniformed Baton Rouge officers hired to work an extra security detail for the concert event. He described it as a “chaotic scene” while testifying in court Thursday.
He was directing traffic and providing crowd control when he heard the gunshots ring out on the opposite side of the parking lot.
Prosecutors played McKneely’s body camera footage in court Thursday. It showed officers trying to maintain order and secure the scene in the aftermath of the shooting. Partygoers could be heard shouting and crying out for help over the blaring sounds of car alarms, vehicle horns and police sirens.
One woman seen on the body-worn footage was on her knees performing CPR on a victim lying on the ground between parked cars. “Stay with, stay with me. C’mon, stay with,” she pleaded desperately as she feverishly administered chest compressions.
Cormier was rushed to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where he died hours after the shooting from multiple gunshot wounds.
In the early morning of Sunday, Oct. 20, shots cut through a crowd waiting to order at a foo…
McKneely told jurors he spotted two suspicious men near a silver pickup truck and radioed for other officers arriving on scene to detain the men after he saw them place black objects inside a toolbox in the bed of the truck. McKneely believed the items were guns.
Seconds later, he saw a third man retrieve the items from the truck’s toolbox, then get in a vehicle to leave the scene. McKneely drew his shotgun and ordered that man out of the SUV himself and had officers detain him. Police found three weapons in the front passenger’s side seat of the SUV, McKneely testified. Two of the guns had extended magazines.
The man in the SUV told officers he swiped the guns from the pickup after he saw the first two men place them in the toolbox. He described it as “spotting a lick,” a slang term that indicated the man intended to sell the stolen guns to make money, McKneely testified.
Police arrested the other two men spotted near the pickup. Tyrelle Jabari Hamilton, 31, was charged with obstruction of justice — tampering with evidence. Court records show he is set to accept a plea deal in the ongoing case next Wednesday, Jan. 28.
Robinson originally was indicted on five counts of attempted second-degree murder in addition to the weapons and murder charges he is being tried on this week. Prosecutors dismissed the attempted murder counts Jan. 15, according to court records.
On the night of the shooting, food tents were set up in the parking lot of for the event. Police said Robinson admitted to shooting Cormier “after hearing someone shoot as he was waiting for his food at the food tent,” according to his charging affidavit.
Investigators reviewed footage from four surveillance cameras at surrounding businesses to identify Robinson as the shooter, court records show.
Robinson’s fate will be decided by a jury panel composed of 11 women and three men. He sat at the defendant’s table with his head tilted down during opening statements Thursday but lifted his gaze toward the jurors as his public defender, Melissa Walker, made her opening salvo.
Robinson’s attorneys may argue justifiable homicide, according to a self-defense motion filed Thursday. But Walker seemed more inclined to prove her client was not involved in the shooting at all during her opening statement.
“There is nothing to identify Michael as the killer, but the state wants you to send him away for the rest of his life,” she said, citing the fact that a guilty verdict on the murder charge comes with a mandatory life sentence.
The defense attorney acknowledged Robinson may have made some bad decisions by being at the night club that night. But she stressed that he didn’t kill Cormier and urged the jury to see him as one of their own children.
“This is a 25-year-old kid who’s fighting for his life. He goes to Angola if you find him guilty. And if the state proves their case that he committed the crime, then he should,” Walker said.
“Defense attorneys aren’t proponents of crime. But we do want it done right. Because putting the wrong guy in jail for a crime that the state hasn’t proven doesn’t make Baton Rouge safer. It makes it more chaotic.”
Testimony came to a screeching halt Friday evening when Robinson’s attorney objected to prosecutors playing surveillance footage from the three area businesses. During a sidebar with attorneys, Chief Judge Donald Johnson, who is presiding over the trial, ruled the surveillance footage inadmissible as evidence.
According to a motion Robinson’s attorneys filed Tuesday, the surveillance cameras were among several key pieces of evidence prosecutors disclosed to the defense lawyers untimely, in the days leading up to this week’s trial. Attorneys said Judge Johnson deemed the camera evidence prejudicial to the defense.
Prosecutors said they intend to file an emergency writ challenging the judge’s ruling at the First Circuit Court of Appeal. Jurors were dismissed in hopes the appellate court makes a ruling over the weekend in time for the trial to reconvene for a final salvo Monday.