Cheyanne Schultz Cardinale, a 19-year-old white woman from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, grew up on the Gulf Coast where she was born on April 8, 2000. She was remembered by family and friends as a bright, funny presence who loved to make people laugh and to lift the mood of any room she entered. Known affectionately as “Chy Chy” and “Shae,” she was raised by Melissa and Tony Cardinale and was deeply rooted in her community and church life, attending Bayou Talla Fellowship under Pastor
Justus Froman. Her death on January 8, 2020, came suddenly and violently, cutting short a life that those closest to her describe as tender-hearted and full of potential.
On the night of January 8, Cheyanne was riding with three friends — Morgan Landry, Andrew Rodgers, and Sidney Foster — as they pulled into the parking lot of the Bay Park Apartments on Longfellow Road in Bay St. Louis. Without warning, a man later identified by police as 23-year-old Jason Michel emerged with a shotgun and opened fire on the car in what authorities would call an ambush. The barrage of gunfire tore through the group: Cheyanne and Morgan were mortally wounded, Andrew was left in critical condition, and Sidney suffered injuries that were serious but not life-threatening. Cheyanne died that night, while Morgan succumbed to injuries the following day in the hospital, turning what had begun as an ordinary evening drive into a mass shooting that stunned the small coastal city.
In the chaotic moments after the shooting, Michel’s violence continued beyond the apartment parking lot. Investigators said he stole the victims’ vehicle and fled the scene, then drove to a nearby gas station where he carjacked another vehicle at gunpoint, escalating the terror he had already unleashed. Police later revealed that Michel was a convicted felon on parole at the time. As officers pieced together what had happened, they learned that he eventually returned to his home covered in blood. It was his own mother who, confronted with the sight of her son in that condition, called the police. Michel was arrested shortly afterward and charged with multiple serious offenses, including murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, carjacking, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. News accounts from the period focus on these charges and his initial court appearances; publicly accessible reports do not clearly document what ultimately became of the case in terms of trial or sentencing, leaving the formal legal ending of the story largely absent from the record.
From the beginning, investigators said there was no indication that Cheyanne or her friends had any prior relationship with Michel, and statements by the Bay St. Louis police chief described the attack as a senseless act, a seemingly random eruption of violence aimed at a car full of young people returning to an apartment complex. In the days that followed, her name appeared in obituaries, memorial pages, and online tributes that emphasized her warmth, humor, and the joy she brought to those around her, in stark contrast to the cold, indiscriminate nature of the crime that took her life. Community members lit virtual candles, wrote messages of grief, and gathered around her family, mourning not just the loss of Cheyanne and Morgan but also the shattering of their town’s sense of safety. The official documents and brief news items record the shooting in terms of dates, charges, and casualty counts, but the memories shared by those who loved her preserve a different picture: that of a young woman whose laughter, nicknames, and close-knit family ties are now frozen in time on the night the gunfire started.
