Nicholas Kent Sparks, a 25-year-old man from Shreveport, Louisiana, was shot on the night of January 17, 2021, in what began as an urgent call for help and ended in silence along Lakeshore Drive. Around 8:00 p.m., Shreveport police were dispatched to the 3800 block of Lakeshore Drive, where officers found Sparks with a gunshot wound to the chest. The injury was catastrophic; police said he died at the scene, and later reporting tied to the coroner’s office placed the shooting outside a home
near the intersection of Lakeshore Drive and Cross Lake Boulevard, with his death occurring shortly after the gunfire.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators moved through the familiar ritual of a homicide scene—tape, photographs, interviews, and the slow assembling of what witnesses saw and what physical evidence could still speak for itself. Shreveport police said violent-crimes detectives and crime-scene investigators processed the location and interviewed multiple witnesses. From those statements and the evidence collected, detectives identified a local man, Mawu Goodrum as the person they believed shot Sparks.
Two charges followed that identification, each describing a different facet of the same night: an arrest warrant was obtained for second-degree murder, and a second warrant alleged illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. When police publicly named Goodrum, they also warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous, urging anyone with information to contact investigators or provide tips through local channels.
The search did not remain open-ended for long. In the same police announcement that initially described Goodrum as wanted, an update was added stating he had been arrested and booked into the Shreveport City Jail. A separate press-release republication echoed that Goodrum was in custody and reiterated the same charges stemming from the Lakeshore Drive killing.
