In the early evening of a Friday in January 2024, a dispute at a residence in Shreveport's Martin Luther King Jr. neighborhood turned deadly. Inside a home on 5th Street, an argument escalated, culminating in 42-year-old Derrick Taylor being shot in the abdomen. The incident occurred around 7 p.m., and Taylor was quickly transported to Ochsner LSU Health hospital for medical attention. Despite the efforts of medical staff, he succumbed to his single gunshot wound at 7:41 p.m.
His death was officially ruled as the fifth homicide in Shreveport and Caddo Parish for that year. Authorities with the Shreveport Police Department are continuing to investigate the circumstances that led to the fatal shooting.
In a separate and unrelated case from September 2020, another man named Derrick Dewayne Taylor, aged 46, also lost his life in a violent encounter in Shreveport. This earlier incident unfolded in an apartment on Marion Street where Taylor was asleep next to his new girlfriend. In a fit of jealousy, the woman's ex-boyfriend, Cortney Taylor, entered the apartment and stabbed Derrick Taylor in the heart as he slept. The single stab wound to the right ventricle proved to be fatal, causing him to bleed to death. Though the woman did not witness the stabbing as she was asleep, surveillance footage captured Cortney Taylor entering and leaving the apartment.
Following the murder, Cortney Taylor fled the Shreveport area but was apprehended by U.S. Marshals in December 2020. During his time in custody, he made a jailhouse phone call in which he reportedly stated that his ex-girlfriend would be unable to testify against him because she had been sleeping during the incident. In May 2023, a jury took just 30 minutes to convict Cortney Taylor of second-degree murder. He subsequently faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
