In the early morning hours of February 10, 2013, a tragic incident in Lafayette, Louisiana, claimed the life of 15-year-old Austin Rivault. The young man, a resident of Lafayette, was fatally shot while riding in a pickup truck with two friends, Cole Kelly and William Bellamy. The trio had driven to a home on Green Meadow Road where the shooting occurred.
After the shots were fired, the injured teens managed to drive themselves to a nearby hospital, but Austin succumbed to his injuries.
The investigation into the shooting quickly led to the arrest of 18-year-old Seth Fontenot. Fontenot admitted to firing his 9mm pistol at the truck, stating that he believed the teenagers were attempting to break into his vehicle. He claimed he was trying to scare them off and had aimed for the tailgate of the truck, firing three controlled shots from a distance of six to eight feet.
A grand jury initially indicted Fontenot on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. However, the legal proceedings that followed saw a different outcome. In March 2015, a jury convicted Fontenot of the lesser charge of manslaughter in the death of Austin Rivault, as well as two counts of aggravated battery for the injuries sustained by the other two teens.
In July 2015, Fontenot, then 21, was sentenced to five years in jail for the manslaughter conviction. The judge suspended all but 13 months of the sentence. He received identical concurrent sentences for the two aggravated battery convictions, meaning he would serve no additional time for those charges. The sentence was considered lenient by the prosecution, who had argued for a much harsher penalty, as a manslaughter conviction could have carried a sentence of up to 40 years. The judge, in his ruling, characterized the shooting as 'an act of negligence' rather than one of malice, stating that the court's duty was not to seek vengeance or retribution. The prosecutor announced plans to appeal the sentence, calling it an 'injustice.'
