In the summer of 2020, a life was tragically cut short in Lafayette, Louisiana. On the morning of Friday, June 19, 27-year-old Rico Thomas was shot in the 700 block of Edison Street. He sustained a single gunshot wound to his upper torso and was rushed to a local hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. The male suspect managed to flee the scene before law enforcement arrived, prompting an investigation by the Lafayette Police Department.
Within days, authorities identified a
suspect and made an arrest. Keon Woods, a 25-year-old from the nearby city of Carencro, was taken into custody and charged with one count of second-degree murder. He was subsequently booked into the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center. Investigations later revealed that Woods was the brother of Rico Thomas's girlfriend. The fatal encounter reportedly occurred after an argument between the two men. According to Thomas's mother, Mildrina Hebert, Woods approached her son and shot him without any preceding physical altercation or exchange of words.
The legal process that followed the arrest concluded not with a jury trial, but with a plea agreement. To spare her family the trauma of reliving the tragic events in a courtroom, Rico Thomas's mother agreed to a plea bargain. Keon Woods pleaded to the lesser charge of manslaughter. As a result of this agreement, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison with hard labor for the killing of Rico Thomas. The resolution of the case left Thomas's mother expressing dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system.
