Sidney Nelson Jr., a 16-year-old Black male, was a student at Central Lafourche High School and a native of Raceland, Louisiana. His family, including his parents, Sidney Nelson Sr. and Erica Guidroz, and his sister, Tia, remembered him as a resident of Schriever whose life was cut short in the spring of 2023.
On the afternoon of Monday, April 24, 2023, residents of a quiet Houma neighborhood heard multiple gunshots. The incident occurred shortly before 3:00 p.m.
in the 2600 block of Payne Street. A local reverend, Henry Castle, was sitting behind his home when he heard about four shots. He rushed to the scene two houses away and found Sidney face-down in the grass. The reverend knelt and prayed over the young man. When officers from the Houma Police Department arrived, they found Sidney deceased from gunshot wounds.
The homicide investigation moved quickly. Within days, detectives identified three suspects and obtained arrest warrants for second-degree murder. The suspects were identified as 18-year-old Triston Butler and 18-year-old Kayon Smith, both from East Houma, along with an unnamed 16-year-old juvenile.
Police took Triston Butler into custody on April 27. For the juvenile suspect, the Houma Police Department reached out to his family and, with the assistance of a community partner from the NAACP, successfully negotiated his peaceful surrender. Within a week of the shooting, all three suspects, including Kayon Smith, had surrendered to the department and were in custody.
In May 2023, a Houma grand jury found enough evidence to indict the 16-year-old on the charge of second-degree murder. At that time, Triston Butler and Kayon Smith were awaiting their own grand jury hearings. The case reached a conclusion when Kayon Smith went to trial. In March 2026, he pleaded guilty to the shooting death of Sidney Nelson Jr.
