Vontré DePaul Broussard, a 21-year-old Black man from Lafayette, Louisiana, was killed on the afternoon of July 24, 2021, in Carencro, when a quick stop at a Walgreens ended in gunfire. It happened in the parking lot along the 900 block of Gloria Switch Road near University Avenue, where police said Broussard had just stepped out of a vehicle to go inside the store. Within moments, shots rang out, and he was struck and rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Investigators described the attack as a drive-by style shooting, alleging the gunfire came from Kendall Leopaul of Lafayette. Police said Leopaul opened fire, sending multiple rounds toward Broussard and into the vehicle he had been in, turning a busy retail lot into a sudden scene of panic. In the days after the killing, authorities publicly identified Leopaul as the suspect and asked the public for help locating him.
By mid-August 2021, law enforcement agencies working together, including the U.S. Marshals Service and the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office, arrested Leopaul on an outstanding murder warrant connected to the Walgreens shooting. At the time, he had been described by Lafayette police as their “Most Wanted,” and officials also said he was a person of interest in two other violent-crime investigations in Lafayette, though those separate investigations were described as ongoing.
In November 2021, prosecutors took the case to a grand jury, and Leopaul was indicted on multiple charges tied to the attack, including first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, assault by drive-by shooting, and aggravated criminal damage to property. Reporting on the indictment said the alleged burst of gunfire was not limited to Broussard alone: the charging documents described shots fired toward Broussard and a group of people, including Walgreens patrons, and also cited damage to the building and a vehicle.
As the case continued through the courts, a Lafayette Parish grand jury later issued a superseding indictment that changed the top count, accusing Leopaul of second-degree murder and three counts of aggravated criminal damage to property, replacing the earlier first-degree and attempted first-degree murder counts described in prior reporting. The later report noted that a conviction for second-degree murder in Louisiana carries a mandatory life sentence without parole, probation, or suspension of sentence.
