In the late hours of a Thursday in March 2016, a life was tragically cut short in the Madison Place subdivision of Bossier City, Louisiana. William Christopher 'Chris' Flowers, a 40-year-old man from the nearby city of Shreveport, was found lying on a sidewalk in the 200 block of Melissa Lane, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. The call to the police came in at approximately 10:30 p.m. on March 24th, reporting a man had been shot.
Despite the swift response of the Bossier City Police and Fire Departments and his transport to University Health in Shreveport, Flowers succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead.
The investigation into the shooting quickly led to an arrest at the scene. Patrick Newton Harris, a 39-year-old resident of Bossier City and a coworker of Flowers at AT&T, was taken into custody without incident. Detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit determined that the shooting occurred during a physical altercation between the two men, who were not only colleagues but also friends. Harris was initially charged with second-degree murder and booked into the Bossier City Jail.
The legal proceedings that followed would stretch over the next few years, culminating in a conviction. In August 2019, a jury found Patrick Newton Harris, then 42, guilty of manslaughter in the death of William Christopher Flowers. The verdict brought a measure of closure to a case that began with a violent confrontation between two men who shared a workplace and a friendship, ending in a senseless loss of life. Flowers was remembered as a loyal and dedicated employee, a loving husband to his childhood sweetheart, and a devoted father to his three children.
