In the early morning hours of June 21, 2015, Donlisha Patterson, a 21-year-old woman, was tragically killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She was a passenger in a silver Honda Accord with her cousin and a friend. The group had briefly stopped at a party on East Upland Avenue but decided to leave because it was attended by high school students. As they drove away from the area, multiple gunshots were fired.
Patterson, who was in the backseat of the vehicle, was struck by a single bullet to the head. She was rushed to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries.
The investigation into Patterson's death led authorities to Elton D. Gaines, III, who had been acting as a security guard at the party on East Upland. A witness at the party stated that after a black car drove past the house, a gunshot was heard, and she believed Gaines then fired his weapon at the car. Gaines left the party shortly after the incident. Two days later, on June 23, 2015, Gaines turned himself and his firearm in to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's homicide detectives. Ballistic testing confirmed that the seven shell casings recovered from the scene of the shooting were fired from his gun.
Elton Gaines was subsequently indicted by a grand jury on one count of second-degree murder. Following a trial, the jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The court sentenced Gaines to twenty years of imprisonment at hard labor for his role in the death of Donlisha Patterson.
