Marcus Eriz: California man convicted for shooting 6-year-old Aiden Leos in road rage incident
Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers’ discretion advised.
SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA: On Thursday, January 25, a jury in Orange County, California, found a man guilty of shooting and killing a 6-year-old who was in another vehicle, during a road rage incident.
On May 21, 2021, Marcus Anthony Eriz, 26, shot Aiden Leos while he was being driven to school. According to the prosecution, Eriz's girlfriend Wynne Lee, 26, allegedly cut off the child's mother, Joanna Cloonan, as she was driving Aiden to kindergarten at Calvary Chapel in Yorba Linda.
Eriz could receive maximum sentence of 40 years to life in prison
Wynne Lee was driving a Volkswagen SportWagen with Eriz in the passenger seat.
After Cloonan gestured at Lee and Eriz with her middle finger, the mother continued driving when she heard a loud noise and her son uttered "Ow." Prosecutors said that she pulled over to the side of the freeway, removed Aiden from his car seat, and dialed 911. Aiden was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Following a manhunt that began after the shooting, the defendants were apprehended by the California Highway Patrol on June 6, 2021, Law&Crime reported.
Lee is currently being prosecuted for being an accessory after the fact, illegally carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle, and faces a maximum of three years in prison if convicted, according to the district attorney's office.
Eriz has been found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, shooting into a moving vehicle, and two additional felonies related to the personal discharge of a firearm that results in significant harm or death.
At a hearing on April 12, he could receive a maximum sentence of 40 years to life in prison.
Orange County District Attorney expresses 'heartbreak'
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer remarked, “The heartbreak of a parent losing a child is so overwhelming that no word exists to describe it.”
He went on to say that the incident had affected the whole city, “The short, happy life of Aiden Leos is a life interrupted, abruptly ended by a bullet that pierced Aiden’s heart. The bullet not only killed a little 6-year-old boy; it ripped a hole in the heart of all of Orange County."
"Six-year-old boys should be playing outside in the sunshine, soaking in all the magic and wonder that is boyhood, not lying dead in a tiny, child-size coffin because a man he never met decided to execute him for no conceivable reason," he added.
Spitzer concluded and said, "While we will never know what Aiden would have become, we know that the pursuit of justice did not end until his killer was captured and this child murderer was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
