In the early hours of a Wednesday in April 2018, the quiet of a Baton Rouge, Louisiana morning was broken by the discovery of a car engulfed in flames. Inside the vehicle, authorities would find the body of 34-year-old Antonio Sterling, a resident of St. Gabriel. An autopsy would later reveal that Sterling had not perished in the fire, but had been shot before the blaze was intentionally set.
This grim discovery marked the beginning of a nearly two-year investigation into a calculated and brutal murder.
For months, the case simmered with few public leads, a painful silence for the family of Antonio Sterling, who was notably the cousin of Alton Sterling, a man whose own death in a police-involved shooting had shaken the city and the nation just two years prior. The Sterling family was once again thrust into the anguish of a violent loss and the slow-turning wheels of justice. But investigators were meticulously piecing together the events that led to Antonio Sterling's demise. A breakthrough came when they traced the murder to a local tire shop on Florida Street. It was there, detectives determined, that Sterling had been shot and killed hours before his car and body were abandoned and set alight.
In February of 2020, the investigation culminated in the arrests of two men, cousins Derrick Jermaine Banks, then 44, and Kelvin Phillips. Both were charged with second-degree murder. Investigators were led to the suspects through a combination of anonymous tips and crucial physical evidence. Traces of Antonio Sterling’s blood were discovered at the tire shop, which Phillips had been renting at the time of the murder. In an apparent attempt to conceal the crime, the tire shop was also set on fire approximately 24 hours after the shooting, a brazen effort to destroy any lingering evidence.
At the time of his arrest for Sterling's murder, Derrick Banks was already in jail on unrelated charges. His criminal history painted a picture of a man familiar with the justice system. Just a few months after being charged with murder, in July 2020, Banks was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison for being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. This sentence, however, was separate from the still-pending murder charge. The legal proceedings for the murder of Antonio Sterling continued for both Derrick Banks and Kelvin Phillips, marking another chapter in a story of violence that had deeply affected a family and a community already acquainted with profound tragedy.
